Should we still use Trello in 2023?

Greg Taieb · · 5 min read

Trello is the tool that popularized the Kanban method in the professional world and among the general public. A visual, flexible and easy-to-understand organization that made the tool famous and still makes it a reference application today.

How did Trello become hasbeen?

Yet when we look closer, Trello has barely evolved over the last 5 years, remaining on its initial proposal: very rigid columns of cards without any alternative view.

But things have changed enormously in recent years and tools like Airtable, Notion or even Meistertask have shown that we can offer a wide variety of ways to display the same information:

  • Kanban
  • Calendar
  • Spreadsheet
  • Gallery
  • Mindmap
  • Gantt
  • Google Maps…

And I'm not even talking about template options and customizations allowed by the tools that I mentioned above, truly allowing you to make tailor-made products.

In short, Trello has let itself be overtaken on all sides by creating a tool stuck in its original vision and which I have not used for years as a result.

What's new in Trello?

The reason why I'm talking to you again about Trello is that the company has just announced its biggest development since its acquisition by Altassian in 2017 for the modest sum of $425 million.

Objective? Give longtime fans a good reason to come back and convince new users.

For this, the company is inaugurating a new visual identity and offering new products galore in addition to a bold roadmap.

The arrival of views

We therefore had to wait until 2021 for Trello to offer something other than Kanban to visualize the cards on a board. We now find the following views:

  • Gantt
  • Spreadsheet
  • Dashboard
  • Calendar
  • Map

It’s less than elsewhere but a good start. I note the arrival of an interesting new feature, the possibility of grouping cards from several tables in a view.

More powerful cards

Cards remain the heart of Trello and they evolve naturally. They now include content from third-party applications. For example, a Google Doc link pasted into a card offers a preview of the document. Around thirty applications are compatible (Youtube, Instagram, Stripe, Invision, etc.).,,0

Other features are planned for maps in the coming months, including the ability for a map to appear in several tables. A clever way to share information/task between several projects.

And always…

In addition to all these features, Trello retains what has been its strength until now.

  • Power-Ups: a large catalog of extensions adding functionalities
  • Butler: its powerful automation engine which allows you to easily set up rules, actions and buttons.

For this, the company is inaugurating a new visual identity and offering new products galore in addition to a bold roadmap.

Why I wouldn't go back to Trello

All these new features bring a welcome breath of fresh air to a solution that has been stagnant for several years and that's excellent news.
Is this enough to bring back an early user like me? The answer is clearly no.

An answer which may seem categorical but which can be explained for 2 reasons.

Reason 1: You have to pay to access these features

You read correctly, all view features are only accessible in the paid version of the application ($9.99/month/user).

Of course we can get an idea by testing14 days without commitment,but depriving the majority of users of what is now part of the basic functions of competing solutions is not a great idea.

If these features were exclusive to Trello, we could justify this choice but this is not the case. On the contrary, and this is precisely reason #2.

Reason 2: Trello remains worse than the competition

Again, if what this update did put Trello above the rest, I'd be willing to pay. Only the application remains collecting current references.

An illustration? Here is what ClickUp offers, an incredible competing solution in terms of views in its free version:

And I'm not even talking about the customization options that allow tools like Airtable, Notion or Clickup to offer custom fields in order to completely control the input and display options. 

It may seem abstract but being able to add properties to maps with one click in order to best suit your needs remains the only way to adapt a tool to your needs and not the other way around.

Even if the notion of “custom field” exists in Trello, it remains much less developed than what the competition offers and this is what users are increasingly expecting in the trend inaugurated by other NoCode tools.

In conclusion

As you will have understood, these new features are struggling to convince the old user that I am. And yet I loved using Trello. For me, it remains the first online productivity tool that was able to convince teams and companies on a large scale because it democratized the Kanban view.
Only now, the competition is formidable and, to our delight, very powerful and free alternatives are available. For any slightly advanced user, the presence of multiple views to display the same information quickly becomes essential and why pay for Trello when it's free and better elsewhere?

Next week I will present ClickUp to you, an application that amazed me because it has the ambition to “replace them all”.

Just that…