What is Trello and what is it used for?

What Is Trello?

Trello is a visual project management application built around the Kanban board methodology. It was created by Fog Creek Software (now Glitch) in 2011 and spun out as a separate company. Atlassian acquired Trello in January 2017 for $425 million.

How Trello Works

Trello organizes work into a three-level hierarchy:

• Boards: Represent a project or workflow (e.g., "Marketing Campaign Q2")
• Lists: Columns within a board representing stages (e.g., "To Do," "In Progress," "Done")
• Cards: Individual tasks or items that move between lists

Cards support descriptions, checklists, due dates, labels, attachments, comments, and custom fields. Users drag cards between lists to update their status.

Key Features

• Butler automation: Built-in rule-based automation (rules, buttons, scheduled commands)
• Power-Ups: Extensions that add functionality (calendar view, voting, custom fields)
• Views: Board, Timeline, Table, Calendar, Dashboard, and Map views
• Templates: 100+ board templates for common workflows

Pricing (April 2026)

• Free: Unlimited cards, 10 boards/workspace, limited Power-Ups
• Standard: $6/user/month — unlimited boards, custom fields, 1,000 Butler runs/month
• Premium: $12.50/user/month — all views, advanced checklists, 6,000 Butler runs/month
• Enterprise: $17.50/user/month — org-wide permissions, unlimited Butler runs

Who Uses Trello

Trello is popular with small teams, freelancers, and non-technical project managers who want a simple, visual way to track work. It has over 50 million registered users (reported by Atlassian). It competes with Asana, ClickUp, Monday.com, and Notion for project management use cases.

Strengths and Limitations

Trello excels at simple, visual task tracking. Its Kanban-first design makes it immediately intuitive. However, teams with complex project management needs (resource allocation, Gantt charts, time tracking) often outgrow Trello and migrate to ClickUp, Asana, or Monday.com.