Top Trello Alternatives: 10 Best Kanban Tools of 2021
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The power of Trello is its simplicity. When it comes to project tracking, kanban boards are one of the most popular tools. And Trello is among the most popular kanban tools on the market.
But this isn’t a popularity contest. It’s a find-the-best-tool-for-your-business contest. (Naming things was never my strong suit.)
We’ve packed the 10 best Trello alternatives into a single post to help you supercharge your productivity with a project management tool that levels up your business.
Let’s dive into some Trello alternatives to help your business get ahead in 2021.
Quick Introduction to Trello
Source: Trello
As you might remember from high school science classes, you can’t do a proper experiment without first establishing a control group, against which you’ll compare your end results.
In this case, if we’re going to compare a bunch of tools against Trello, we first have to tell you more about—you guessed it—Trello. Here’s the context:
Trello is a popular online kanban board boasting more than 50 million users. They have a simple interface that makes basic project and task management straightforward. Trello has doubled down on its simplicity by also offering many great templates to help you jumpstart common projects.
The tool isn’t bloated with dozens of bells and whistles. Trello shouldn’t take most digital marketers more than a few days to get comfortable with. Among its lean feature set, Trello offers ways for you to manage projects across your team by: creating deadlines, linking resources, and even assigning boards to members of your team.
Best for: Freelancers and small teams
Pricing: Trello has a freemium option. The paid version begins at $9.99 per user per month, billed annually.
Top Trello Alternatives in 2021
1. Nifty
Trello is a place to manage tasks, whereas Nifty is a place to manage everything. Nifty empowers your task management by providing Kanban & List views with bulk actions and assignee automations, as well as task-driven Milestones that automate your project’s progress in real time as tasks are completed.
Nifty expands collaboration on a project level by including a baked-in Discussion (similar to a Slack channel), a collaborative Docs section with a two-way Google docs, Sheets, and Presentations integration, and project file storage.
Organizational leaders can stay on top of all Milestone and task deadlines across your workspace by using Overview, Workloads, and All Tasks, and team members can focus on their near and long term initiatives in their My Tasks tab.
Complete with a team messenger and mobile and desktop apps, Nifty is the simple, award-winning workspace you and your team have been looking for.
Best for: Teams and businesses of all sizes
Pricing: Paid plans start at $39 per month, billed annually, for up to 10 team members.
2. MeisterTask
Source: Meistertask
This list includes several tools with greater sophistication than Trello. But we also wanted to list true Trello alternatives like Meistertask, which boast comparable simplicity with a slightly different UI and basic tool suite.
Like Trello, Meistertask is a powerful kanban board that makes it easy to keep your whole team focused on the task at hand. As a kanban board moves to a new column, you can set it to auto-ping another team member to take over the next leg of the project. If you’re using Meistertask to keep up with your content calendar, for example, a writer can move a board from an “In Progress” tab to an “Editing” tab to automatically notify an editor that it’s their turn to work in the blog.
And if you’re looking for a project management tool that works well in a larger tool suite, Meistertask is one part of a larger company called MindMeister which offers a lot more functionality. Just scale your toolkit as you need.
Best for: Businesses of all sizes looking to manage projects across kanban boards
Pricing: Meistertask has a free version. Paid memberships start at $8.25 per user, per month.
3. Wrike
Source: Wrike
Kanban boards are some of the most popular project management tools. But sometimes you need tools that truly go above and beyond. Wrike is one such tool.
Wrike is an all-in-one online business tool that provides dashboards and features to help your team strategize, work toward goals, track progress, and manage people and tasks. Wrike prioritizes collaboration across your team with features like image and video commenting to help team members provide creative feedback, even from far away.
Of course, to be on our list, Wrike also has to be a powerful project management system — which it is. Use Wrike to create Kanban boards, task lists, and workflows.
Best for: Large teams who need to collaborate across many tools and departments
Pricing: A lite version of Wrike is available for free up to 5 users. Paid plans start at $9.80 per month per user.
4. ClickUp
Source: ClickUp
ClickUp is a more comprehensive Trello alternative than any of the tools we’ve considered so far. Instead of simply offering project management tools, ClickUp provides a wide range of tools to keep your business running. Just a handful of these tools include: docs, notes, spreadsheets, time tracking, and more.
On the project management front, ClickUp offers multiple views (including kanban) to make sure your team stays on task. ClickUp makes it easier for your team to collaborate, stay ahead of deadlines, and see progress in real-time.
Best for: Teams looking for a single tool that serves many purposes across the organization
Pricing: ClickUp has a free version. Their premium plan is $5 per user, per month, billed annually.
5. Plutio
Source: Plutio
The first AppSumo partner on our list, Plutio is a Trello alternative that helps you collaborate with team members and clients. From project management to invoicing, Plutio is a one-stop-shop for dozens of your most common business software needs.
On the project management side, Plutio offers automations and templates to help small business owners work quickly. You can create recurring and one-off tasks, multiple project views, and normal features for editing things like deadlines and notifications. Plus, you can switch on the time tracker to see how long it takes you to accomplish certain tasks.
Best for: Freelancers and agencies
Pricing: Plutio usually starts at $15 per month for individual users. But you can get a whole year for up to 30 team members on AppSumo for $199. By the way, that price will be locked for every year you use the service.
6. Kanban Tool
Source: Kanban Tool
I bet you could guess what this tool is known for. Yep, Kanban Tool is all about the kanban boards. This one doesn’t need much explanation. It uses a simple interface, combined with a handful of adjacent tools like time tracking, to help teams manage their projects and workflows.
If extra tools distract you from the task at hand, Kanban Tool keeps things simple, so you can focus on what’s important.
Best for: Small teams needing a simple kanban board
Pricing: Kanban Tool has a freemium option. Their premium pricing starts at $5 per user, per month
7. Monday
Source: Monday.com
As you can tell, we keep jumping from lean to all-in-one tools. Think of Monday.com as the all-in-one project management tool—something you might compare to more closely to Basecamp or Asana.
Monday.com gives you many ways to visualize ongoing tasks and projects, from calendar views to kanban boards. But Monday.com also offers many powerful automations to make sure recurring tasks don’t waste your time. There’s nothing like a project management tool to help you realize where the tedious work is. Monday.com gives you the proper tool suite to streamline those recurring tasks so you can focus on more important projects.
Whether you need to see the bigger picture, allocate work to teammates, or collaborate on projects from a distance, Monday.com is a popular solution.
Best for: Teams looking for a comprehensive tool that provides everything in one place
Pricing: The basic plan starts at $7.80 per user per month, with a 5-person minimum.
8. Asana
Source: Asana
Another robust Trello alternative, Asana is an all-in-one project management tool—and probably one of the most famous on our list. If you need more than a simple kanban for tracking progress and managing projects, Asana has a robust toolbox with multiple views to keep you on task.
Beyond the kanban boards, Asana offers timeline, calendar, and progress views. Plus, you can have conversations with your team members within the app and create simple to-do lists for the one-off tasks that require less oversight.
You can share files, create in-app teams, and create reports to compile recent progress. Want to read a more in-depth comparison between Asana, Trello, and Plutio? We’ve got you covered.
Best for: Teams of all sizes looking for a collaboration tool
Pricing: Asana has a freemium version of its tool. The premium version starts at $10.99 per user, per month (billed annually).
9. Basecamp
Source: Basecamp
Basecamp, like Asana, is a very popular tool for team-wide project management and collaboration. As far as Trello alternatives go, Basecamp is arguably the most comprehensive tool on our list, boasting a large suite of functions to help you stay organized, focused, and productive.
From a project management perspective, you can check schedules, share files, check off to-do’s, and use multiple views to see your progress. Like Plutio, Basecamp also has a client-facing side that allows you to pull clients into your workflow, without giving them access to important information they don’t need to see.
You can organize Basecamp by project, department, topic—you name it. And as you work, easily communicate with your team through internal chat. Sure, it takes a little getting used to, but once you’re past the learning curve, Basecamp packs a lot of functionality into a single platform.
Best for: Medium to large businesses looking to compile multiple collaboration tools into a single app.
Pricing: Basecamp Business is $99 per month for unlimited members. You can also get a free personal plan, which is good for freelancers and solopreneurs.
10. Blossom
Source: Blossom
Blossom goes into the straight kanban category. It’s lean like Trello, but offers robust analytics and reporting about your ongoing workflow. At the end of the day, what you track gets improved. Blossom helps you record your productivity so that you can see real data about how you and your team are performing.
On the kanban front, Blossom has a simple UI, with information about individual users and projects. Is your co-founder based on the other side of the world? Blossom gives you information about their situation, including when they’re online, what time it is in their timezone, and more. With Blossom, more information is put in your hands so that you can improve communication and collaboration.
Best for: Data-driven project managers and businesses
Pricing: Blossom offers a 14-day free trial. Their prices are not listed on their website. Their pricing begins at $19 per month, according to Capterra.
Honorable Mention: ProofHub
ProofHub is a comprehensive project management and team collaboration software. Like Trello, it’s fairly easy to use, with little to no learning curve. However, as an alternative to Trello, ProofHub offers much more than kanban boards and other basic project management features.
You get multiple views (List view, Kanban board view, Gantt chart/Timeline view, and also Calendar view) for added flexibility. You can share files, create notes, track time, create custom reports, and do much more on the project management front.
For team collaboration, ProofHub offers a built-in chat tool to simplify team communication. You can also enjoy a dedicated space for real-time discussions. Plus, there’s a powerful proofing tool, which lets you easily share feedback and review files.
Best for: Teams looking to replace their collection of business management apps with a single all-in-one solution.
Pricing: ProofHub has a flat, no per-user pricing model. The Ultimate control plan with unlimited projects and users is available at $89 per month.
Pick Your Favorite Trello Alternatives
Did you find the Trello alternative you’re looking for?
Finding the right project management tool isn’t easy. Fortunately, there are dozens of powerful tools out there to choose from. If you still haven’t made up your mind, make sure to check the AppSumo store regularly for additional project management tools to help your business get ahead.
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