If you’re searching for the best alternatives to Trello, this article has all the answers you need.
Trello is one of the best project management software on the market today. We have also found it to be the least costly to set up. However, depending on your needs, it may not be the best solution for you.
We have tested dozens of tools to find the best Trello alternatives and have shortlisted the top five. In our analysis, we found ClickUp to be the best software for most users, Asana to have the best balance of power and simplicity, and Teamwork to be the best for service-based businesses.
Monday.com outperforms the rest for partnering sales with project management, while Smartsheet excels at making the best use of excel sheets for projects.
Sounds interesting? Let’s take a closer look.
The Best Trello Alternatives
If Trello doesn’t meet your needs or you’re just curious about what other project management tools are on the market, let’s evaluate the top five options we believe are worth considering.
First up, ClickUp makes it to the top of our list as the best app for most users. The software offers the best pricing plans as well as robust task management and collaboration features. Among all the tools we evaluated, ClickUp is easily the most affordable with the lowest monthly costs on the annual plan.
Upon logging in, the main dashboard gives users a birds-eye view of their projects and responsibilities. Each user gets an “everything” view, making it easy to see the tasks assigned to the user. ClickUp also offers top-notch natural language processing for setting up tasks. For example, you can simply type the deadline for a task instead of going to a calendar and browsing to the required date. ClickUp is at the intersection of solid features and great pricing. If you’re interested, you can try the free plan to see if it’s a good match for your needs.
Asana is an awesome combination of power and simplicity. The web and mobile app offer an intuitive design that’s easy to use and implement your projects on. Add your team members easily, assign tasks, and tag them in comments to get the required updates in a timely fashion while minimizing email clutter. When starting a project, you can select from several different styles to organize your tasks. Make it a simple to-do list, a Kanban board, or a timeline.
You can also choose from a variety of pre-made project templates to help you get started. As you complete tasks, the app would celebrate each little win with attractive animations across the screen. Asana offers tons of integrations as well to supercharge your project management skills. The free plan is robust and is a great way to understand whether this app is right for you. Give it a try!
When it comes to client and service-based businesses, our pick is Teamwork. The app allows you to bring all your work in one place and see it together, be it your team, clients, freelancers, or projects. Get tons of advanced project management features such as time tracking, resource allocation, and budgeting. For larger entities, there are plans available that allow the addition of enterprise features such as CRM and chat.
The app has a shallow learning curve, making it easy to set up and use for new users. Managers can keep track of all project work and resources using a comprehensive overview page. This keeps the team on the same page, makes adjustments easier, and lowers the chances of last-minute problems arising. If this sounds like the app for your type of business, take Teamwork’s free forever plan for a test drive.
Moving on, we found Monday.com to be the best app for partnering sales with project management. With clients like Coca-Cola, Hulu, and Canva, Monday.com has carved a reputation for itself as a robust project management solution for medium to large businesses. The app allows managers to maintain a sound overview of the resources, tasks, and deadlines for a given project.
Easy-to-use automation, messaging, and real-time notifications make the job easier, helping to keep all team members on the same page at any given point. The app also allows users to create custom workflows to best meet the needs of their projects. If this sounds like the app you had been looking for, give Monday.com’s free plan a try!
Finally, we found Smartsheet to be the best software for turning spreadsheets into project management gold. This immensely powerful app is currently in use at global organizations such as P&G, Lego, Pfizer, and American Express. The software offers a rich set of views, workflows, reports, and dashboards to help you track your plans, resources, and schedules.
This level of flexibility allows managers to use Smartsheet for a variety of objectives, from simple projects to complex company-wide initiatives. Smartsheet is popular among large teams at Fortune 100 companies. If you feel it might be a good fit for you, start your free trial today!
More Top Project Management Alternatives
To give you a deeper analysis of the best project management software on the market, we’ve prepared a detailed guide for you so you can choose the tool that suits your needs. To prepare this guide, we tested dozens of tools and ranked them based on pricing, ease of use, task management features, and more. Go ahead, and see all of our top picks.
Our Take on Trello
Trello is among the most popular project management tools in the world. It may not offer as many features as some of the more sophisticated project management apps, but its strength lies in its simplicity, ease of use, and low cost of deployment.
Trello allows you to easily add project collaborators and organize themselves using several project management tools. Kanban boards allow team members to keep track of what’s pending, what’s in progress, and what is done.
An activity feed provides information in a timeline-like fashion on what actions are being taken by team members as they work on their tasks. Meanwhile, a project calendar keeps track of key dates for deliverables and deadlines with the ability to send out timely reminders.
A comprehensive dashboard allows you to maintain a birds-eye view of all your activity, act proactively to prevent bottlenecks, and visualize key metrics like
Trello allows for the creation of multiple workspaces, each with unlimited boards that can be used for different organizational functions and unique workflows.
Individual tasks appear as project cards. Here you can add collaborators as assignees, attach files, and create separate conversation threads to discuss the details and answer any questions.
To further organize your work, you can use tags and labels to group similar tasks together as a category. Examples of labels could be new features, bugs, documentation, and rework.
As team members make updates or modifications to individual tasks and projects, everyone involved gets notifications with snippets of information about the changes. This helps to keep everyone on the same page.
With all its strengths, Trello has its fair share of drawbacks. In terms of reporting, the software falls short of the mark when it comes to workload management reports and features
We also noted the software’s suitability for smaller teams. When it comes to large teams, the software lacks many essential team management features. Customers would have to switch to the Trello Enterprise plan for better scalability.
Trello vs. ClickUp
One of the first things you’d notice about ClickUp in comparison with Trello is that it isn’t as easy to set up. When you first start, ClickUp takes you through a set of tasks designed to teach you how to use the software’s features. Each of these tasks has a video link in them as well for further explanation. In our research, we concluded that the tasks alone won’t help you much unless you watch the videos as well. A much better way to help the user understand the main features would have been an interactive guided tour.
Therefore, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that ClickUp has tons of features that make it a difficult software to learn. On the other hand, Trello is straightforward to set up. This is why we recommend Trello if your project management requirements aren’t too complex. But if you need a comprehensive solution with advanced project management features, ClickUp is the way to go.
Trello vs. Asana
A lot like Trello, Asana is easy to set up and use. What Asana does better than Trello is to provide a more robust set of project management tools. You can seamlessly add projects, tasks, and team members to your workspace. Conversations under every task are easy, with tagging and file attachments working similarly in both apps. However, a drawback in Asana is the inability to assign a task to more than one collaborator.
Overall, Trello seems to take an essentialist approach to project management, whereas Asana offers a broader set of features. Trello’s lower price point makes it a better option for entry-level project management, while more seasoned professionals may want to take a closer look at Asana.
Trello vs. Teamwork
Teamwork has been specially designed to manage multiple projects, resources, freelancers, and clients in one place. Compared to Trello, Teamwork is a more specialized project management software. What sets it apart is advanced features like time tracking, budgeting, and resource allocation with the option to add enterprise-level features such as chat and CRM,
Trello excels at helping an average user get started quickly and for free or at a low setup cost. While Teamwork is more geared towards founders, directors, and experienced project managers. In addition, Teamwork has a robust integrations library and can work seamlessly with Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft Teams, Chrome, Slack, and many more. This makes it a great option to consider for project managers looking to organize all their work in the same place along with managing their clients, resources, and projects
Trello vs. Monday
When we talk about Monday.com, we’re talking about the big leagues. With many Fortune 500 clients on board, Monday.com is suitable for medium and large teams and businesses. This is where it mainly differs from Trello. In addition, Monday.com also offers a robust free forever plan for up to two seats. The plan gives you over 200 templates and robust iOS and Android apps among other benefits.
Monday.com integrates with a wide variety of tools, making it easy to import all your work into the app and vice versa. The software remains the best tool for partnering sales with project management. Its custom dashboards allow users to track and present their project updates based on the needs of their organization. We recommend Monday.com for anyone in the medium to large business category due to its feature richness and flexibility.
Trello vs. Smartsheet
Smartsheet is the best software on our list for converting spreadsheets into project management gold. This is substantially different from the role typically played by Trello. Smartsheet is the go-to solution for Fortune 100 companies and large teams due to its feature-richness, ease of use, and robust project management tools.
It allows you to create multiple views for your projects and data, allowing you to change how you organize project information based on the nature of the work and the team you’re working with. While Trello works best for relatively small and budget-conscious teams, Smartsheet lies at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Summary
Even though Trello requires the lowest cost commitment for setting up PM software, larger organizations with more complex projects usually prioritize the availability of features, scalability, and ease of use.
Ultimately, the software you choose would depend on what you’re trying to achieve, the size of your team, and your budget constraints among other factors. But we hope this guide has helped you learn about the best Trello alternatives available today and would aid you in your decision-making process going forward.
