Trello has just been sold for the despicable sum of 425 million dollars. The popular productivity application already has 19 million registered users and is considered by many to be one of the best applications to apply the Kanban method to organize tasks. This does not mean that it is the only one, there are many similar options.
If you are a Trello user and you are concerned that once the service happens to be from Atlassian you stop having a free plan, or you just want to know what alternatives you have that work similarly with a large multi-column board and cards, we leave you some solutions that are free and others that are also open source and you can host yourself.
KanbanFlow
KanbanFlow as its name makes clear, is a Kanban board that allows you to organize your work in a visual way and helps you to simplify team communication to increase your productivity. It is an extremely simple application that focuses completely on the popular productivity technique.
You can create different boards that are organized vertically in tabs and each board can add different columns within which you can add cards. These cards may have different colors and assigned team members. You can add to-do lists and sub-tasks.
You have several things you do not get in Trello , such as the ability to add a task limit to a column to keep some projects more focused and avoid abusing multitasking. You have filters that allow you to only look at the cards according to a color, label, user or expiration date. You have recurring tasks that repeat automatically. And, you have integration with Dropbox, Box and Google Drive.
KanbanFlow is free with no time limit or users and also integrates a Pomodoro clock with statistics. They also have a payment plan that includes much larger reports and analytics. Of course, you do not have native applications, but you can access everything from the web either from a computer or mobile device.
Archmule
Archmule is a great and rather simplified alternative to Trello . It works in the same way, a great board with columns from which you can drag different tasks in the form of cards. You also have a home page that shows you a summary with the most important of each update of each team or project you follow.
With Archmule you can create private or public projects and share them with the world . Here you can see an example of how they look and how you can interact with them. Archmule is quite social, boards offer the option to “follow” or give “like”. In addition to this you have a space to talk to the members of each board, the “hub” that is like some kind of mini chat.
The service is completely free and has no limits at the moment. You can attach files, assign tasks to any member of the team, comment, assign dates and organize everything in the calendar view, and also have integrations with Slack, HipChat and Flowdock.
Kanbanchi
Kanbanchi is a free online tool for project management, task management and team collaboration. Of course, use the Kanban visual method to organize all the tablets in an interface that allows you to drag tasks from one column to another.
Kanbanchi works completely integrated with Google Drive and is ideal for those who use Google Apps for work. You can create an unlimited number of boards and share with an unlimited number of collaborators for free.
You can receive notifications in your email if you update a project, you can use Google Calendar to add due dates to the tasks and follow up, you can leave comments on the cards, identify them with labels and colors, and even import your Trello boards.
Asana
Asana is a well-known collaborative and project management tool, but it was not until the end of 2016 that it finally added Trello style boards to its application. Thanks to this, it is even easier to organize a project with Asana .
Asana has everything you would expect from an app in this list: you can have multiple projects, with multiple collaborators, on different boards with several sections that have their own task lists. Asana is free and you can use it without limits from the web or with your mobile apps.
Todoist Boards
Boards is an experiment of the same people behind the task manager Todoist , is a very simple application that applies the Kanban method to organize projects on boards with interchangeable cards.
At the moment it is only available for Windows 10 but is profiled as a great alternative, especially for its integration with the mentioned Todoist.
Boards is also free and offers a simple and easy-to-use interface ideal for those who are just in touch with the Kanban technique for the first time and are accustomed to simpler tools like Todoist.
Wekan
Wekan is basically an open source clone of Trello . At first sight it looks almost the same and the differences are minimal. If you want to see an example of exactly how it works, the project has a public board hosted by them that you can look at.
You do not have to entrust your data to anybody with this alternative, because Wekan’s idea is that each one houses their own boards on their own server. Obviously this is intended for more advanced users, but it is still a great collaboration tool, ideal for software development projects.
Taiga
Taiga is another project management platform designed for developers and designers who want a useful and beautiful tool that makes work easy to enjoy. It’s free, it’s open source and it’s simple.
Taiga uses only the Kanban method to manage tasks in columns, but also uses Scrum, a methodology for software development that helps programmers manage the development of a product efficiently. Taiga even has its own wiki with all the necessary documentation for you to implement your own version.
Kanboard
Kanboard is the ultra minimalist option of the group, it is also an open source tool written in PHP and available under a MIT license. It has many useful features like the inclusion of tasks and sub-tasks, search and content filters, attachments, comments, multiple projects, reports and analytics, plugins and integrations with external services, etc.
Obviously you also have to host it yourself, but the installation is quite simple, plus it uses so few resources that you can run it on a Raspberry Pi.
