42 simple ways Trello could be better (but isn’t)
- Stability and performance
- Add more value in each plan
- Be more professional
- Make Trello more people-proof
- Educate your users better
- Organize your main “Boards” view
- Quality of life
- What could have been
Back in 2021 I was running out of patience with Trello. It had some major stability issues, it had constant connectivity issues and not saving my changes, only telling you that your progress in the past hour wasn’t saved and is completely lost.
This issue has been so frequent, weekly and sometimes almost every day there was some work not saved, that Trello became unusable.
Also, I felt that development of Trello almost stopped, over years I have noticed only a few meaningful changes and as I grew, as my projects and business grew, I started to need more features and more reliability from my main management tool.
I tried to make it work for a few years, adding extensions, external services and even developing my own, but it felt like I am spending more time on maintaining the tool instead of actually using it. It was time to say my goodbye to Trello.
So, in February 2021 I decided to find a new tool and fully migrate my work to a more suitable tool, something with great support and community, and something that is keeping up with times and will be future-proof.
I ultimately decided for Notion, why and how is topic for another post, but I have decided to revisit my notes about what I want Trello to improve (and what I am looking for in a new tool) after more than two years, to see what has changed and perhaps help others to choose right too for them.
But this is not a review of Trello. Just my notes of things that bothered me about Trello. And if it’s going to feel like a rant over Trello, well, it kinda is.
After each of my notes I have included an update about current status, what has changed and if it has been resolved, to give you a full picture.
Just a disclaimer, I have only the Free account, but I have tried to research paid plans as well, if they offer the solution.
I loved Trello, I used to for almost 10 years and I am a very passionate advocate for Trello, always recommending it to others as their gateway to project and task management, and Kanban boards, but it could not keep up and it was time to move forward.
Stability and performance
As mentioned in the intro, stability issues were the main reason why I decided to leave it. It was not loading, it was not saving, you were losing data.
On many occasions I could not access Trello for hours, sometimes even for days. What is the tool good for if you can’t use it?
On several occasions I had to delay or rush projects during the night, because a client shared with me the task in Trello but I could not access it hours later.
Especially frustrating is the illusion of a working tool. Imagine working for an hour, making a nice progress in your project, saving your changes and when you came back an hour later, you found out that nothing was saved?
These outages became so frequent that it was a daily struggle to get some work done. It became unreliable and unusable.
Trello mobile app has offline mode, but this feature wasn’t automatically active, you had to activate it manually for each project. And you would have to do all the work on your phone.
Since 2017 Trello falls under the Atlassian umbrella and its tools (JIRA and Confluence) have been experiencing similar issues. Actually, even bigger, so severe they became a meme in the community. And I was using them all.
Update: As I am no longer an active Trello user, I can’t evaluate it.
Add more value in each plan
Create plan for premium solo users
There was no premium solo user. Something for people like me, who used Trello to manage their small freelancing business and their personal tasks. Trello’s sole focus was closed teams (not overlapping) or whole businesses.
That means that if you want a premium plan, you have to pay for each team you are in. And if for example you want to manage your business and personal tasks separately, that would be two teams and two subscriptions you would have to pay.
Or at least the way I used it. You could merge everything into one team with separate Kanban boards, but it would be a bit messy.
And if you would invite somebody to help you, you would have to start paying for them as well. Just because you joined your boards to add one comment.
And Trello was very popular amongst freelancers like me. It was simple, very nice looking, and you could start using it straight away, no need to spend hours setting it up, changing permissions, defining structure and workflows.
Solo users were remnants of the old days. Solo users were no longer welcome.
I was left with three options - make it work with the free account, reorganise everything and pay for Business Class with one user, or use something else.
And if I need to invest my time and rework everything and change how I work, and I have to pay for it, I might as well find something better. Which I did (and it was Notion).
Update: No solo plan. Only team plans and Trello’s FAQ respond to it is “to have one-person team”.
Trello, make up your mind about Trello Gold
There was Trello Gold. It kinda was a premium solo user, but it wasn’t promoted and offered, you go really deep into your settings and know where the option to purchase it and activate it.
It wasn’t featured on their pricing page, it was hidden.
But the features in Trello Gold were nowhere near what business plans offered. It had more automation and features, but most of it was just nice to have and useless things like background images and stickers.
It felt like they had it just to annoy advanced users to push them to upgrade to Business plan. I think it used to be around €3,5 (+ tax) per month and the Business plan was around €10-12 (+ tax).
I was paying for Trello Gold to get the extra automation and add-ons, but even that quickly ran out every month and I had to add external services to supplement that. For which I had to pay extra above the Trello Gold subscription.
I think Trello Gold was their way to grow the user base, as it was a reward in the referral program - you would get one month of Trello Gold each new user you invite, but then they tried to monetize that and push you to Business plan.
Update: As of August 2021, Trello Gold is no longer available as part of Trello’s rework towards team workspaces.
On the positive side, the Free plan got unlimited add-ons and a lot more automation operations (from 50 to 250 per month), making it a decent plan for more casual users.
More features in Business plan
Instead to add more core features, Trello’s main strategy was to add more integrations with custom third-party tools, to add add-ons (called Power-Ups) you would activate and set up individually for each Kanban board.
Problem was that most of the add-ons were paid, so if you got a higher plan, you only got a right to pay more to get the job done. Only a few were free, usually the most simplistic, like the ability to add notes.
And as each addon was made by a different company, you had to invest time in learning about it, creating new accounts, new payments, and only then setting it up, for each board separately and often for each user individually.
The Business plan was mainly about being able to use an unlimited number of these addons on your boards (limit for Free plan was 1 and Gold had 3) and lots of Trello’s effort was aimed on adding more addons.
Update: Business plan was renamed to Premium, but you can use unlimited add-ons from Free plan. That however did not change the fact that many of the addons has to be paid extra.
More Butler operation
Butler was an add-on allowing you to automate some tasks in Trello, like moving and sorting cards etc. It used to be a third-party paid add-on, but acquired by Trello in 2018 and implemented as a core feature.
Each plan had a limit of how many operations you can use each month, with Free plan having only 50 operations for the whole account, which wasn’t even enough to learn to use it and test your scenarios while setting it up.
It took me a few months to properly set it up, because I kept running out of operations in like 10 minutes of testing, even with Trello Gold (which had more operations, but I can’t remember how much).
Especially in the beginning of the project, when I was preparing a new board, I used up all the operations setting it up and then I had none left to actually run my project.
There was no way to buy more operations, only upgrade to the Business plan, which for me would mean to pay over €300 every single month for all my teams, which is ridiculous. And the Business plan was also limited.
I quickly stopped using Butler, because it created more problems than solved. Tools should make your work easier, not give you extra problems to worry about.
Instead, I used Make.com (previously Integromat), an IFTTT style tool, which has a free plan. And I can automate other tools as well, not only Trello.
Update: Butler limits were increased, Free plan now has 250 operations, Standard has 1000 operations, and Premium plan (formally Business plan) with unlimited operations.
Expensive Power-Ups (add-ons)
Trello is dependent on Power-Ups. The Trello ecosystem is built by Power-Ups. These add-ons expand Trello with advanced functionalities so you can build your custom ideal system.
However, these Power-Ups are not free. Most of them are paid tools (freemium and premium only), some even more expensive than the Trello subscription itself.
And in the past, the number of Power-Ups per board was very limited - free plan had 1, Trello Gold had 3, so even if you wanted to build your system, you couldn’t.
When you put it all together, you might find out that your “free” Trello is often much more expensive than other professional tools.
And that happened to me, I would have to pay around €300 a month to use Trello as a single person for one business and several hobby projects. So, I decided to leave.
Update: This strategy hasn’t changed. The Trello ecosystem is still based on large pool of external add-ons, but they at least included some Power-Ups in core features and removed the limits on how many Power-Ups you can have per board.
Be more professional
I get it. Trello chose a way and it is not my way. Trello wants to attract people who want to play with pictures and colors, not people who want to make serious business. Distract people with crafts, not let people focus on deep work.
But I wish it accommodated both approaches. That it would give me the option to declutter the same as it gives me the option to over clutter everything.
That is also a reason why I stopped promoting Trello for business. It is still a great way to learn about task management, dip your toes in personal management, for specific projects, but not for scalable futureproof business.
Update: Trello keeps pushing their “creative” advantage over other tools.
It keeps putting on the top of what it offers the ability to change background, add color labels, add images, add GIFs etc. That’s just crafts and play.
Gannt and Table views of your board
Kanban is great, it is the golden standard, but I was missing also other views of tasks, mainly timeline/Gannt chart style view and simple table view.
Gannt chart/timeline views would also open a door to task dependencies, being able to set which task needs to be done before others, which are required before moving forward.
Update: Additional views of your board were added to Trello, but only to the paid tiers.
Time tracking
Time tracking, how much time you spent on the task, is another basic element of project management, and very important for business, especially freelancing.
Trello does not have native time tracking; yes, again, you can install some Power-Up or get external tools like Toggl, but it would be great to have it properly integrated by default.
Update: No time tracking in core Trello, only via Power-Ups or external tools.
There are 10+ time tracking addons and I have found at least one that is free, but I still had to create a new account to use it.
Make Trello more people-proof
Trello is a very flexible tool, you can change almost everything, and as such is very dependent on correct behaviour of users.
Ironically, it is very limited if you want to build some barriers for users, if you want to add limits so people don’t break your system.
Fixed workflows
Biggest downside of tools like Trello are its users.
You can build the best system in the world, but when you add other team members who are not as organised, detail oriented, into the project or business, it will quickly fall apart.
Some people are not wired that way, some can’t follow even simple workflows, and some simply don’t care. They will move tasks how they please and make a mess in your system.
That is why I was missing an ability to build a fixed workflow. To be able to set up, that task can only move from In Progress to Done, but not the other way round.
Otherwise, people will start moving tasks between statuses how they please and then you need to micromanage it to maintain it. I have done it and it is hell.
Update: Such a feature doesn’t exist in Trello and I haven’t even found any usable Power-Up or addon either.
History of card’s description
There is no card history easily available. If you delete a card’s description, only (technically skilled) admin can recover it. And if you don’t know how, the data is lost.
It is recorded, if you export the card, you can see the whole history in the export file, but it isn’t shown directly in Trello, there is no preview of the history.
Update: Situation is still the same, no preview of the card’s description history.
Embrace visual minimalism and give users ability to hide features
I always liked the look of Trello, it was always organised, yet never sterile. I always like its clean look, not too many settings, sections, pop-ups etc.
I like things without excess and distractions. If there is a button I need every day, I want it right there. But if there is something I will use only once, I don’t want to look at it every day.
And I think Trello has a few functions that can be hidden, based on your workflow and how you use Trello. Or move those “one-time” functions to some hidden settings menu.
Especially when you start learning keyboard shortcuts, you don’t need to see buttons for the same function on each Trello card.
For example, if I am working alone, I don’t need a button to assign tasks to people, because I am the people.
It would be great if Trello allowed us to hide these buttons and make it more distraction free. It is possible, I did it with a custom code in my browser.
Update: No change. Trello is not thinking this way.
Global settings and ability to disable features
It would be great to globally disable some features, so you or somebody from the team couldn’t mess up your board.
It is closely connected with ideas to hide features and being able to set fixed workflows. It is about reducing risk and being able to focus on work without distractions.
Update: Such a feature doesn’t exist in Trello.
Required approval before completing the tasks
With some teams I was implementing Trello, a frequent request was to have a review system before a task is considered completed. To have an approval feature for the manager to review the task.
There are of course Power-Ups for approvals, but often require paid premium versions to be really usable for normal business cases. This could easily have been part of the core Trello.
Even a basic feature setting who can approve and when the move requires approval, or even when moving to a specific column, would make Trello much better and later they could have expanded it.
Update: Approvals are still only possible using third-party Power-Up.
Educate your users better
I always felt that Trello lacks in providing its users with information on how to use it, how to set it up, and how to build more advanced and complex systems.
Trello was often presented as a tool for creatives, yet there are very few creative uses of Trello out there. Trello needs more examples, more content about what can be done.
Especially with Power-Up. It is focused on building more integration and using extensions, yet nobody is showcasing and demonstrating these additional tools and explaining them to users.
Release notes and notifications
Trello always lacked in communicating and presenting updates and new features. There were no notifications in the app about new releases, they just made the change if it was just there.
You would learn about it just because you stumbled on it, which now forces you to investigate it and find out what it is and how to use it, instead of getting all the info right away and going back to your work.
And if the change was something more out of sight, like a new setting, you might not find it for months. Months you could be using it and making your work easier. Making you angry for the wasted time.
And without notifications you start to wonder if it’s still being developed or has Trello abandoned? Do I need to start looking for an alternative? And if there are more things bothering you, you will.
Trello has a blog where they publish some announcements, but only for big releases and they are more marketing and promotional posts, rather than educating users about new functionality.
I experienced one release where in one moment all my shared boards just disappeared in the middle of my work. First, I thought I accidently deleted them, then that all my clients removed my access, only to learn a day later that Trello completely reorganised everything and they were just hidden in some new section. No notification, no warning. Just like that.
That makes you question if such stress and unpredictability is worth it.
Update: With new management under Atlassian, Trello is included in their release notes. It is however very technical, developer notes, something average Trello user will not have easy time to understand and navigate.
Advanced use
All Trello content, both directly from Trello and from online creators, was focused all on the same basics of what a Kanban board and how Trello looks. This is the name, this is the description, this is how you add labels etc.
There was no advanced Trello. There was very little content about automation, about how to use Trello for freelancing, how to build CRM, e-commerce order system, best way to create card templates, board templates, workflows etc.
All “advanced” content was just scraping the surface, introducing you to concepts like CRM and giving you very basic examples.
Update: I did a quick search on YouTube and haven’t found much about advanced use of Trello. All still going into basics and giving you dummy examples, not showing you full scale real use.
I actually haven’t found a lot of new content all together, pretty much everything was from 3-5 years ago, videos I have already seen and way before major rework of Trello in 2021 and later.
Have culture of builders, not fixers
This is closely connected with my previous note about advanced use. I always felt that the online Trello community is just about the basics and fixing problems, rather than building a better system.
If you look at the two major hubs, Reddit and Atlassian community forum, they both look the same. Sometimes there is a tip or trick shared, but mostly it’s people trying to solve their problem.
Compared to Notion, which I use now, you have content creators testing new features and sharing pre-release previews, giving you heads up about what is coming and how you can use it and implement it in your workflow.
There are people sharing their setups, their workflows, things they have built, rather than people reporting their issues with Trello or asking about things they don’t know how to do.
Update: This is just how things are. This is the culture of the Trello, and even more after they were sold to Atlassian. There isn’t really a promoter community.
It kinda feels like all passion disappeared. It feels like Trello is another boring corporate business tool that nobody cares about. Like Word for example. Who today is excited about Word?
Have board examples and templates
Trello has some basic documentation, a knowledge base on how to use the app etc., but for people who never worked with project management tools it might be hard to put things together and build a solid and usable system.
I was missing some practical examples of how to organise boards for more specific projects or industries. The only option you had was to try to replicate somebody’s boards from watching their YouTube videos or screenshots on Reddit.
The great solution would be to have a gallery of examples and templates, ideally with some documentation explaining how it should be used or why it was built the way it is.
I have seen many people misusing Trello, because they don’t use the features like they were intended. Yes, if the system works for you, build whatever you want, but you should try to build a more predictable system.
For example, some people understand Kanban as to organizing tasks by category, not by status, so they would have all tasks of one category in one column and order them by status in that column.
Such a system would be very confusing to anybody familiar with Kanban, and it would require constant maintenance and a lot of shuffling cards, scrolling, etc. and would be very prone to mistakes.
The reason why you use this app is to make your life simpler and easier, to be able to organise your project and be able to involve others, ideally without explaining how things work.
Update: Trello now has a section with board templates created by other users. It is not fully open, there are only selected templates organised by topics like Marketing, Personal, Sales etc., each with about 20-30 templates.
I appreciate that these templates also come with instructions and comments on how to use them, giving you clear steps on how to start using them. Or even just as an inspiration for your own custom setup.
Power-Up documentation and onboarding
There is no documentation about each Power-Up. Nothing standardised. You only have the sales page, promoting the Power-Up, where you usually have only a brief description of the tool.
There is often no manual or tutorial, how to set up and use the Power-up. You might find them outside of Trello, on the website of the Power-Up author, but even that was rare.
Your only option was to test everything and go through it manually.
And that can be overwhelming and take a very long time, considering there are over 200 Power-Ups and sometimes you need to combine multiple to get what you want.
Which was complicated even further by limits on how many Power-Ups you could have on each board. In the past free tier was allowed to have only 1 Power-Up, Trello Gold has 3.
And cherry on the top, most of the Power-Ups are paid tools (freemium and premium only), some even more expensive than Trello subscription itself.
Update: There is still no standardized documentation for Power-Ups, no additional space manuals and tutorials directly in Trello. Not even for the Power-Ups by Trello.
Organize your main “Boards” view
Separate Personal and Shared boards
There is no separation between personal (private) and boards shared with you, they are all stored in one group called Personal boards.
Your boards created in Personal boards are fully private, only you can access them. If you want to invite anybody to your private board, you need to move that board under a team.
Yet when somebody shares a board with you, it will be shown as one of your personal boards, even though it is not a personal board, but you are a guest on somebody else’s team board.
There are already 2 special sections for starred (favourite) and recent board, why is there no “shared with me” section?
Update: In May 2021, Trello changed the structure and separated your workspaces and guest workspaces into two sections (owned by somebody else and you are just a guest there).
The guest workspaces are now at the end of the list of all workspaces, but there is no link in navigation to access them, you need to scroll to them.
Scrolling is not an issue, but lack of link is. Now it seems like they disappeared and you are no longer part of them, and that created some confusion and stress.
And sometimes when you load the main page in Trello, it doesn’t load the guest workspaces section and you need to refresh, even several times.
Trello, at least fix the links for the guest workspaces, so we don’t think we were kicked out from our clients’ boards.
Order your workspaces manually
It is not possible to order your workspaces manually. It is ordered alphabetically only.
Trello tries to be flexible, giving you power to set everything based on your needs, but when it comes to organizing your man page, it just locks you out.
Trello expects users to be in just one or a few workspaces. It is made for companies to have one workspace with multiple teams.
Update: The order of the workspaces is still locked only to alphabetical order.
My workaround for my personal spaces is to number them based on your priorities, as numbers have priority over letters.
Order your boards manually
Every user should have freedom to organize and reorder their boards. If not an individual user, then admins at least. But boards within a team are ordered alphabetically and it can’t be changed.
Only way around it is to rename all your boards. I had to number each board to order them, but the best part is when you want to change the order and you need to rename all your boards to give them a different number.
But I think this should be up to the user to order their boards. Just because you all work in the same Trello team, it doesn’t mean your priorities are the same as the order users.
Yes, make one default alphabetical order. But give us the option to organize them too.
Or even better, give me the ability to switch between “default” alphabetical order, admin’s custom order and my custom order.
Update: Still not possible to custom order boards. Only workaround is to add a number in the name of the boards, same with ordering workspaces above.
My cards
One of the huge drawbacks of Trello is not being able to see cards you are assigned to and you need to work on.
Trello works on the assumption that you would be working on only a few boards at the same time and it is not an issue to check there boards manually.
But what if you have 30 workspaces and 100+ boards for different business and projects?
Trello is not built for volume work for one user.
There is an option to see all cards assigned to you in the selected workspace, but that is hidden in your account settings and the view is too small to see the whole board.
I don’t really get this feature; it seems like it was a half-developed build to satisfy the request but never to be actually usable.
It is possible to create mirror cards, have a special board with a copy of all your tasks, but that is something you need to build and you would need to use a lot of automation to make it run.
Lack of overview of my tasks is often a deal breaker when implementing Trello into business teams and not-hobby projects, and we had to go with different tools.
Update: There is still no overview of your cards and tasks.
Knowledge base
Lack of knowledge base or any document-like feature is the main reason I am migrating to Notion. Trello completely lacks the ability to save more complex documentation directly in Trello.
You can only write a card description, everything else needs to come externally.
It relies on other tools like Confluence, Google Workspace (Docs), GitHub etc. to connect with your Trello cards and save your documentation on other platforms.
Which can be used if you already have the documentation there and you just need to connect it, but if you are starting a new team, why would you do that?
I get they are trying to push Confluence to the users, as it is their tool too, but you would still need two tools, two user accounts etc.
I was working with a company trying to build this exact combination, Trello + Confluence, but it failed because now they had to also pay for the Confluence license and learn how to use it.
And Confluence is more complicated to set up than Trello and, in the end, we decided to build it all in Notion, where everything can be in one place, under one roof, and for free.
Update: There is still no knowledge base feature in Trello and I don’t expect them to add it ever.
Summaries, reviews and reports
Let’s be honest, most of the people and teams using Trello are not using proper project management methodologies.
They are not doing regular reviews, don’t have to write a report every week etc.
And I know that Trello is not trying to be a proper project management tool, but even simple reports would help to keep some more business users.
Even something simple as a report of the move of cards for a specific period, users who worked on them, deadlines and overdues etc. Something to monitor progress of the project.
Update: No review or report feature was implemented in Trello. As always, there might be Power-Up for it, but that’s it.
Quality of life
Trello, like any other tool, has its quirks. Things that do not necessarily limit your work, but can annoy you on a daily basis.
Extra steps you need to take, simple things you need to “hack” and replace it with other tools.
Thinking about what I just said, “replace it with another tool”, that’s Trello in a nutshell. Instead of adding features, it lets others make paid third-party tools to solve it for them and call it a day.
It is a cheap way to maintain the tool, but annoying for users to constantly have to set it up and maintain it.
No Dark mode
Dark modes are already a standard feature in many modern tools, so why not in Trello?
Mobile apps of Trello received dark mode in mid-2020, but only the mobile apps. Not the main browser version, nor the desktop app. Why is it taking so long?
Update: Official dark mode for Trello was only released in June 2023 but only as beta.
Board templates
Since 2019 Trello has the ability to create card templates for all plans. Now they should unlock board templates for all users too. They are currently available only for Business Class and Enterprise teams.
There is a simple workaround as any board can be copied, so can just create an extra board and use it as a template. It works fine, you just need to manage more boards. So it is not like they would add something that Free users don’t already have.
Update: As a Free user I don’t see an option to create a board template. It is probably still only available for Premium (previously Business Class) and Enterprise plans.
Background color for task list
Having background color for the whole task list would improve your visual navigation on the boards.
If you use Trello like a standard Kanban board, each list is a progress status of the task, like To Do, In Progress and Done.
You could highlight the whole list with respective colors, for example green for Done and Yellow for In Progress, to make it easier to see each status.
Update: Such a feature does not exist in Trello.
Native custom CSS
This is one of those really out there things that could have been implemented, but it has served me well. The ability to fully customize the look of Trello, even if with code.
It would be great if there was an option to add my own code to customize Trello. There are browser extensions that will allow me to do that, but they have their own limitations and do not work 100% right.
I understand that Trello doesn’t want to give people the option to mess with their design, but that is the whole idea of Trello, to customize it to your liking.
And we are already hacking it anyway, so you might as well make it easier for us. Or at least add more options to customize the design.
I have used custom CSS code to add background colours to my task lists and hide some less used buttons, like Members, Labels etc.
I used it to make Trello more minimalistic, only displaying what I actually need to see. Rest I can hide or use keyboard shortcuts.
Update: As expected, such a feature doesn’t exist.
Load the whole “Boards” section
It used to be that when you opened the main Boards page (all teams and all boards), it actually loaded all teams and all boards.
It was changed, maybe to load the page faster, and it will now load only the first 20-ish and show you the button to load the rest.
But because you can’t organize and reorder your teams, some of your important teams might be at the very end.
And every time you need to open a Trello board in such a team, you need to scroll down, click the button, wait for it to load and only then open the board you need.
Now imagine doing it several times a day. That’s just annoying.
Update: The partial loading seems to be removed, now the whole Boards page loads again immediately.
Formatting other than markdowns
I will probably repeat myself - Trello is often promoted as an ideal tool for non-techies.
Yet when formatting your text in card’s description, tasks or comments, you need to use markdown syntax to format your texts.
Which means you need to teach all your users new ways how they need to write text.
Which is challenging, especially when people only know how to format text using traditional WYSIWYG editors like Word or Docs.
Update: Trello added traditional formatting buttons, to format text, add links, images etc.
Native spell check
There is no spell check in Trello. You need to use spell check in your browser, native or extension, like Grammarly. Again, something you need to set up.
Browser spell check didn’t work in the past, and using Grammarly extension in Trello wasn’t much help either.
There were some bugs, it was not working properly and it was blocking the Trello from loading and editing the texts on its own, so I had to disable it and I was without a spellcheck.
Update: I still don’t see native spell check in Trello, but I am not fully using native browser spell check in all tools anyway.
Even browser spellcheck is not perfect, it doesn’t load sometimes, but better that than nothing.
List stats
Trello doesn’t give you any information about the number of cards in the list. There is not even Power-Up adding this feature.
But we know it is possible. When you search on the board, it will show you the number of cards in each list.
And there are Chrome extensions adding this feature, even number of checklist tasks in all cards in the list and how many of them are done.
Update: List stats are not in core features of Trello.
List progress bar
Connected to the number of checklist tasks in all cards in the list, it would be nice to see how many tasks are done in the form of progress bar with percentage.
Update: Progress bar is now visible in all checklists, with percentage of the completion. But it still doesn’t show the absolute number of tasks completed and all tasks (like completed 10/25).
No import
There is no import feature in Trello. Not even for migration from other tools.
Many tools are trying to make it easier for users to switch to their tool and offer the option to import and migrate your data to the new tool, but not Trello.
You can’t even import your own Trello data. You can export it, but you can’t import it back again.
Update: Trello still does not support user friendly import. It officially gives you three options - copy paste everything, program your import using their API, or use Power-Up.
There are only two Power-Ups for import, one is even more expensive than the most expensive Trello plan - the Enterprise plan.
You can also create your own import using no-code tools like Zapier or Make.com, which is not that complicated.
Ability to create a backup
In the Free tier you can export only a specific board, not the whole team/workspace or all boards at the same time. I had 100+ boards and weekly manual backup would be exhausting.
With Business Class (now Premium plan), you can export all boards in your team, but there is no option to export all your teams at the same time.
To go around it, I am using a script (locally running on my computer) that downloads all my boards to my computer as JSON files.
Update: In the free tier there is still no feature to export multiple boards at the same time (or whole team/workspace). You can export only individual boards.
I do not have access to paid tiers to check it, but I didn’t find any info about global exports and backups. I suspect you would still need an external custom script to do it.
For those tech savvy Trello users, I used following script: https://github.com/mattab/trello-backup.
More Power-Up variety
There is usually just one Power-Up for each feature. So if you don’t like how it works, there is no alternative. For a system that is based on adding addons, that is not an ideal state.
Update: There are now more Power-Ups for each feature, Trello has more features in core and Power-Ups also get better, but it would depend on what you need.
Home feed
Trello has a “Home” feed, to give you updates and notifications about your workspaces and cards.
I have never used it, because there was no way to filter in it and it got flooded with updates about cards I just edited and other things that got lost.
Update: As I no longer use Trello, I don’t see any notification in the Home feed. In the matter of fact, I don’t see any, even the old ones from two years ago.
Links are automatically transforming to buttons
When you add a link to the card Description, it is automatically transformed to a new button-like design. This change was implemented around April 2021.
But immediately from lunch this “feature” was bugged, it wasn’t loading all the time and for all links. Some links were rendered as buttons, some simply disappeared.
You can remove the button but you need to put each link between two backslashes .
Update: In card Description you can change the visualisation of the link, now if you highlight the link, Trello gives you the option to change how it will be displayed (and edit it, copy it etc.)
This is however not implemented in Checklists. If you add a link as a checklist item, it will be transformed to a button automatically.
You can still change it using backslashes, but those will be displayed, so you link will not be very nice (it will look like this: “\google.com\”, instead of “google.com”).
Reorganizing your labels on its own
Trello started to use “AI” to predict what you do and offer you “better” experience.
They dynamically change your list of labels and move some labels from your list of labels to a dynamic “suggested” list.
But that means if you build a habit of labeling cards and you remember its position, now when you try to add the label, it is not there.
Trello now also hides some of the labels and you need to click the “Show all labels” button to see your labels, which slows your workflow and makes it annoying.
Update: I no longer see this feature, but I might also not have enough labels or switching between labels enough for this function to get triggered.
I recommend testing it on your own setup, on your own workspace, as I could not find any information about it.
No download button for attachment
There is no download button to download attachment from the card. You need to open it and download it using the right click.
There are already buttons to “Open in new tab” and “Delete” attachment, so why not download?
Update: There is still no button to download it.
I know this is very minor and everybody with at least some computer user level would be able to download it, but not all people are.
Own version of each advanced Power-Up feature
I will sound like a broken record, I know that Trello goes with add-ons ecosystem, rather than having everything included in the core application.
I get that it is cheaper and since purchased by Atlassian, they don’t really develop it and focus on their professional tools like Confluence and JIRA.
But look at other tools, they keep developing more features, making their tools more attractive, to keep up with the competition, but not Trello.
I just wished that Trello was growing, so people would have to leave it for Notion, Monday.com and other applications.
Update: Trello slowly adds and expands features, but it takes them months or even years to add something new and useful. Adding stickers to text is not really useful for business.
What could have been
I have been a vivid Trello user and advocate for almost 10 years. I have been promoting it left and right, converting everybody to the Trello religion, making courses about it, mentoring people in using it, even developing my own extensions and customisations.
Yes, I have been. I have recently switched and moved all my 100+ boards to Notion. My projects grew and I needed something more, more and easier to use features, something cheaper, something scalable and future proof. And it felt like Trello did freeze in time. It took months or even years to introduce new features, and often not even properly working.
Plenty of the features that need to be added externally, could have been part of Trello’s core. But Trello chose a path simplicity and catchy design, limiting any individualization to a few pre-approved Power-Ups (add-ons). Which itself contradicts their approach of individualization, because sure, you can activate 30 different power-ups and make them completely unique and custom.
And let’s be honest here, most of the improvements I am proposing will never get implemented because they are not part of Trello’s Big Plan. They chose a path, direction they want to take Trello on and they are following it. Which I respect as fellow entrepreneur, but I also think they are skipping on a lot of potential.
So, I suspect this is just what Trello could have been, not what it might one day be. Which is also good to say out loud, so expectations are aligned with what the tool can offer us.
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