This project management platform is perfect!
It’s fast, and easy to use!
Everything starts out great.
But as your company grows, you realize you’re outgrowing your project management software.
You’ll have to pay extra for every feature you need or upgrade to the expensive business plan.
Eventually, you have to look for a new solution. If you’re looking at Trello or currently using Trello, it’s not a good solution for teams really looking to be productive. It is simply too expensive and lacking when it comes to team communication.
If you need an alternative to Trello, you’re not alone. You’ve heard professionals rave about the tool and it’s one of the most popular project management options available. However, just because it was a good fit a few years ago doesn’t mean better options haven’t arrived!
Trello is a solid project management tool for professionals, but it’s not without its limitations.
Let’s review some highlights to show you why Trello is so dang popular! We’ll examine a few of its flaws and highlight the only tool you’ll need to replace it.
We Know, We Know… Trello is Great
For starters, Trello is incredibly simple. This simplicity makes it attractive to users from all walks of life.
The organization is simple; being able to organize your projects into boards gives you a birds-eye view of a project at a moment’s notice. You can quickly see what tasks need to get done and who’s responsible for doing them.
You can also map out the timeline of a project by adding multiple columns and populating them with cards for tasks.
It’s easy to grasp and works well for managing simple personal projects or creating to-do lists.
All of the above features and the basic workflow of Trello are super useful. If you’re looking for something that can solve all of your problems in one place, however, wouldn’t you consider upgrading your productivity arsenal?
Trello tries to solve productivity enhancement with their Power Ups system. Basically, you can enable features like invoicing, reporting, time tracking, recurring tasks, calendar integration, and more. What’s the catch?
Why would you want to use something beyond Trello?
Obviously as your team grows, you’ll need an easy way to communicate and hold people accountable. Trello, while once a useful tool, is no longer the solution you need. On the other hand, ClickUp is a flexible and customizable project management tool that will grow and evolve with your team. In fact, ClickUp is a perfect Trello alternative.
Why Switch From Trello?
1. Trello makes it extremely difficult to collaborate with your team.
At first, this isn’t a big deal, but as your team grows it becomes debilitating. On the other hand, ClickUp has you covered with a variety of free collaboration features. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Assigned comments: If you just tag someone in a comment, it runs the risk of being forgotten. By assigning the comment, they’ll need to literally resolve the comment in order to prove the action got done.
- Slack integration: Our Slack integration allows you to quickly communicate with your team through Slack and link it back to ClickUp. The Slack integration has a variety of different features, but my favorite is the unfurling feature. If you post a ClickUp task in Slack, it will unfurl so everyone can see the task and communicate within Slack
- Notifications: You can choose exactly which notifications you want to receive. Maybe you’re a manager who needs to receive notifications for all your direct reports– ClickUp will let you do that. Maybe you’re the CEO and want to receive email notifications for all changes within your company… ClickUp lets you do that too!
2. Trello also offers little to no accountability.
Yes, you can assign cards, but what if you have multiple assignees? Trello has no easy fix for that.
Furthermore, a manager has no way to see who’s working on what. It’s impossible to get a full overview of what each person is working on. There’s no way to filter by assignee and no advanced reporting. This might be fine when your team is small and you can keep track of what everyone’s doing, but as your team grows this will severely handicap you. How can you assign tasks if there’s no way to see what each person is working on?
Plus, you’ll have to manually go through all your cards and see who’s assigned to what in order to see overdue tasks. This is simply unrealistic and time-consuming for a large team.
The good news here? ClickUp offers plenty of ways to hold your team members accountable:
- The ClickUp reporting feature allows you to see what each member is working on if they have overdue tasks, and even keeps track of how much time each person has tracked. This allows a manager to easily see who’s falling behind and keeps your whole team accountable.
- Filters allow you to filter by assignee to check what each team member is working on. You can also filter to only see overdue tasks. This is a great way to check who has overdue tasks holding the company back. If you like a certain filter, you can even save it as a favorite for easy access.
- Ability to view all boards (called projects in ClickUp): This is where Trello falls short. You can click into a board to see its content, but there’s no way to see all Boards at once. ClickUp fixes this with our multiple views, all of which allow you to view all Projects in a space.
- Ability to contain boards in Spaces to organize your company (and view all Spaces): Within ClickUp, you can easily divide the different facets of your company into separate Spaces. Trello has a similar capability. The good news when it comes to ClickUp is that you can easily view all Projects within a Space, or all Spaces within a Team. While doing that, you can filter by Team member to see exactly what each person is working on, where they are in their progress, and if they have any overdue tasks.
3. Trello is too simple for true team collaboration.
Here at ClickUp, we also believe in a simple first approach that can cater to personal productivity. But Trello only seems suited for personal lists and to-dos, but for teams, it’s just too rigid. For example, you can only view boards, and one board at a time. In ClickUp, you can view all tasks in one view, across all business units if you need to.
4. Trello isn’t good for large projects.
Aside from being difficult to communicate on Trello, it’s also difficult to visualize large projects. Kanban boards allow for great visuals if you’re working on a small project, but what if your organization is working on many at once?
The board style of Trello only allows you to see one board at a time, so it doesn’t allow for an easy project overview. On the other hand, ClickUp doesn’t limit you to a single view; we have multiple types of views.
There’s Box view if you need that company-wide overview that Trello lacks. We also have a Board view which mirrors Trello’s Board view.
Let’s take a moment here and get one thing straight. Trello isn’t the only one with Kanban boards. There are tons of tools with Kanban boards, including ones that do it better than Trello. You could even use post-it notes for kanban boards. Plus, there are other tools that use boards–like time tracking and CRMs. It’s a myth that they’re best done by Trello. Ok, rant over.
Finally, there’s the most popular view in ClickUp: List View. List view allows you to easily manage, view, and make changes to your tasks.
ClickUp has even totally revitalized Kanban-style task management with the new Board View enhancements. This update allows you to get a complete overview of your team by viewing all Spaces and Projects in Board View. You can even sort your task cards, as well as hide or archive specific columns.
All of our views even allow for both Team and Me view; Team view is used for an overview of the entire team’s tasks, whereas Me view allows you to easily see your own tasks. ClickUp is superior because we don’t limit you to a single view.
Trello’s style might be great when your Team is small with only a few projects, but it’s insufficient as your Team grows. ClickUp provides everything Trello has and more, which is why you should switch today!
Within our views, you can sort and filter across all Spaces so you can easily get the information you need. You won’t be stuck clicking from Space to Space to locate the information you’re looking for.
Our view allows you to easily focus on one project at a time, or get a company-wide overview using All Spaces. That’s the great thing about ClickUp–it’s fully customizable based on the team’s needs and is an excellent Trello alternative for larger and smaller teams alike!
5. Trello requires too many power-ups.
Let’s face it. If you need to do complex project management on Trello, you’re going to have to buy power-ups. They have plenty of options, but you only get one free. Before you know it, your once cheap and simple project management software is extremely pricy and bogged down with power-ups. You’ll have to decide between switching software or upgrading to their extremely pricy business plan!
Here’s the problem, though. Trello at its core is meant to be free. When it was first released, Trello’s CEO was the first to admit that it was impossible to make money. At the time, the product was the best option for free project management software, because the free version truly had everything you needed. That’s why Atlassian (yes, Jira’s Atlassian) decided to buy Trello for $425 million in 2017.
With this acquisition, Trello evolved into something it wasn’t meant to be. The simple tool we once knew and loved still exists, but it’s no longer free! In order to have access to all power-ups, you’ll have to spring for Trello’s enterprise or business plan, and at that point, you’re better off spending your money on a project management software that’s actually geared towards large teams.
What to Look for in a Trello Alternative
With the above problems in mind, let’s take a look at some of the important features to keep in mind when wading through the fifty-plus Trello alternatives out there today.
First, we want tools that are well-liked, have positive reviews, and are also relatively inexpensive. Some of these basic requirements:
- Intuitive user dashboard
- Kanban board
- Feature-heavy free version
- Cheap paid plan
- Easy task creation
- Project timelines
- Collaboration tools
- Drag and drop functionality
- Built-in calendar
- Templates for easy project creation
- Web and mobile app use
- Reporting and scheduling tools
- Multiple user management and assignees
- User-friendly interface
- File sharing
- Solid support documentation
Is ClickUp the Best Trello Alternative?
There are many tools for the job — Monday, Todoist, Asana, Smartsheet, JIRA, and even Basecamp — that pack a serious amount of features into a pretty package.
However, there are always drawbacks.
Here are a few of the reasons ClickUp reigns supreme as the top Trello alternative:
1. You Can Separate Your Boards By Projects
If you’ve tried to manage large-scale projects with Trello, then you know how messy it can get. Your projects and cards end up expanding horizontally and vertically into infinity. This makes keeping track of project details incredibly difficult.
ClickUp solves this problem by making sorting incredibly simple. Instead of having all of your tasks in a single dashboard you’ll be able to create separate projects that are bundled groups of lists, which contain everything that needs to be done.
2. ClickUp Allows Both Single and Multiple Assignees
Sometimes you need more than a single person on a task. In other tools, this simple feature is hard to implement. ClickUp makes it simple.
You can quickly manage permissions so tasks can be assigned to as many users as needed to ensure work accountability for a task. Or add guests and set projects as private!
3. The Hierarchy Just Makes Sense
ClickUp has one of the only project management hierarchies that is structured as the human mind would anticipate. It’s surprising this is lacking in so many tools.
The project hierarchy in ClickUp is as follows:
- Workspaces: This is your top-level hierarchy where you can break your company up into unique teams or divisions.
- Spaces: Spaces are like overarching groups for your team, think “marketing” or “sales”.
- Folders and Lists: This is where your individual projects will be listed, like “SEO”, “content“, “advertising”.
- Tasks: Tasks are where work gets done. Each task can host the activity feed, description, subtasks, assigned comments, and much more.
- Subtasks: If you want to get even more granular, you can break down each task into a specific subtask. Subtasks, like tasks, are capable of powerful features.
4. The Task View Is Very Intuitive
Our design team has focused on UX from Day 1. The task view dashboard is broken down into two columns that show you the details of the task and any activity made on the task.
You’ll be able to easily accomplish:
- Changing the status of the task
- Adding or removing assignees
- Adding tags
- Creating manageable to-dos with subtasks
- Adding attachments to comments
- Time tracking
- Managing task time details
- Assigning comments
- Managing start and due dates/times
Kiss Trello Power-Ups Goodbye
If you’ve been using the Trello app to manage your projects, then you can finally kiss all those Power-Ups goodbye.
It’s time to level up the right way.
With ClickUp you get access to all of the features of Trello and some – plus 100MB of storage!
If you require more storage, then you can upgrade your account to the Unlimited Plan for only $5/user/month.
Your new and improved board will be the home base for all your projects, plus the added bonus of streamlined task management that makes keeping track of all your projects easier than ever.
It’s time to gain access to all the features you need and nothing more. Give ClickUp a try today!
Other Trello alternatives you might like:
1. Asana
For anyone yet to try ClickUp, Asana is probably your best bet to replace Trello.
This software’s modern, sleek interface is all about simplicity and giving you what you need with as few clicks as possible. Collaboration tools are enforced across the entire project management team.
- Simple projects help you stay organized
- One-stop activity feed for notifications
- Attachments can be referenced in the team file storage
- Calendar view is handy
- Real-time synching in every task
- Project permissions
- Board view for Agile project management
For more, check out this quick comparison of Asana vs. Trello.
2. Basecamp
A highly visual project management platform that keeps things simple. Basecamp is renowned for its communication skills.
- Drag-and-drop system makes organization simple
- Discussions and campfires provide excellent collaboration
- Easy access docs and files
- Organize the day’s tasks in an agenda
- Simple to-do-lists
- Centralized message board
- Check-ins with team members keep everyone accountable
For more information, check out how to use Basecamp for project management.
3. Smartsheet
Get away from Excel and Trello with Smartsheet and learn the benefits of real project management software.
- Intuitive, powerful interface
- Gantt charts
- Tasks are available as cards in a board view layout
- Great mobile app and all data is stored in the cloud
- Customizable workspace
- Clear project hierarchy
Conclusion: It’s Time for ClickUp
That’s where ClickUp comes in. Our pricing is less than half that of Trello Enterprise, and we have the features enterprise teams actually need. With ClickUp, you won’t be hurt by one single view or the inability to communicate. We offer features geared towards both small and large teams. Our features promote accountability and offer various options for team collaboration. Unless you’re certain that your company will always be small (and isn’t growth the ultimate goal?) you should ensure your product management software can grow with you. ClickUp is the ultimate productivity platform and we’re growing with your company! We’re adding new features every week, and have an active feedback board so we can always stay in touch with our clients and decide what to work on next.
Import or sign up for ClickUp now for your daily productivity boost!
Join the conversation
Comments for this post are currently closed.
Really love the organization that clickup hierarchy offers. Trello has a tendency of getting too chaotic with complex projects.
Hey, Jack! ClickUp has a unique structure aimed at simplifying the organization of tasks. We felt that other platforms failed at this, which is why we were so determined to make this right :)
I am looking forward to getting used to ClickUp, it works a lot better than Trello already!
So happy to hear you're liking the platform, Darrin! If you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out at help@clickup.com :)
Thanks for this great post! We made the switch to clickup and my team is really enjoying it. Great release!
Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.