How does Trello pricing work? (Here's an explainer)
How does Trello pricing work? (Here's an explainer)
Jul 28, 2022
I've seen a lot of questions around here lately about how Trello pricing works. And you all know I'm the biggest Trello fan ever, but I'll be the first to admit it can be a bit confusing. I made this video to help break down the differences between the plans, and a simplified way to determine how many users you'll need to pay for!
If you prefer to read instead of watch, here's my take:
- If you want unlimited boards, you probably don't need to upgrade. Yes you can only h have 10 boards in a workspace, but you can have as many workspaces as you want, so you can just think of each workspaces as a folder to group your boards by.
Why you might want unlimited boards in one workspace: Chaos. It's easier to just have one workspace that you put everything in and not have to remember what other members are in which workspace. Plus you get some other features, so if you're at all interested in the other features, the unlimited workspaces is a huge PRO.
- If you need to assign members or due dates to checklist items OR are doing some robust automation, that's when you'll need the Standard Plan. Even the advanced checklists... often I actually prefer just creating separate cards if I'm going to have separate owners inside a card, and then use some automation to bring all those cards together as checklist items in one card.
Oh and yes, technically this is also the plan you need if you want custom fields, but if that's the only thing you need, you can use Amazing Fields to replace some of the use (see note below).
Why you might want advanced checklists: if you want to be able to keep track of owners and dates for subtasks. admittedly these have some limited integrations with reminds, and due dates, but i see improvements in this all the time. for instance, checklist due dates now show up in Calendar View and the Calendar Power-Up
Why you might want Trello's custom fields: if you want to automate anything with custom fields or be able to see them on mobile
- If you want the dashboard/map/table/calendar views or you want the ability to add "Observers" to your boards with limited access, you'll need Premium. Oh - and if you only are interested in Calendar View, then you skip Premium and add the Calendar Power-Up.
You might also think "oh and there's more volume so i can do more automation commands", but you probably only need this is you're doing VERY SERIOUS volumes of automation. When i say serious, i mean, like LOTS of commands runs all the time, with things happening daily, or several actions being tied to triggers that happen frequently, or automation across tons of boards. Trello is pretty generous with the automation amounts in free and standard plans, and you can check your usage by going to Automation --> Account and see if you're even close to your limits.
If you think I'm kidding, i do ROBUST automation for myself and for demoing a lot of things for the community and my videos, and while I can't see how many commands i've run because I have unlimited, I've ran 2330 operations, which is greater than the commands I've run, and the month resets in 3 days. 😂) I have Trello Premium, but would probably be fine with Standard for automation purposes.
Why you might want advanced views: Quickly see stats about your cards without enabling other power-ups, view cards in timeline format - which is calendar + another dimension on the side, like organized by members, list, or labels. Maps view is also cool if you're working with location data! And some folks love the table view because they miss their spreadsheets
- You probably only want enterprise if you're a really large company with thousands of employees OR require strict security controls. Really helpful if you don't feel like adding a bunch of people to a workspace, but rather want to just enable anyone with an email on your company domain to have accessto Trello. Also, if you want to be able to control more security settings, like disabling the ability to make public board, single sign on access, things like that.
And the big question... Trello pricing is by user in a workspace. You don't upgrade an "account" per se. Pricing is per number of users that are on more than one board in a workspace.
More details --> You upgrade a workspace, and the number of "non-guest" users in that workspace. Guest isn't a role you assign someone. Guest just means someone part of more than one board.
If you have a workspace and you upgrade yourself (one user), you'll only pay for your user in that workspace, and you can invite as many people as you want to a single board in there and everyone in that board will experience the premium features, while you're only paying for yourself. But if any of those people are on other boards in that SAME workspace, they'll become a user instead of a guest, and you'll pay for them as well. Just make sure they're only members of that board and not members of your workspace, otherwise you'll still be charged for them.
Some of that's some opinion in there, so I welcome others to comment with their opinions as well! Let me know if you have any questions or anything I didn't address.
Well demystified @Brittany Joiner , it can be confusing when upgrading and you are required to provide the workspace when most think that the upgrade applies to the user.
I also didn't know that members of a workspace are considered users rather than guests. Great tips all round. 🙌
Question: what if a guest, member of several boards within a premium workspace, has a premium account by him/herself? Will I pay for him/her as an additional user?
@Cdn great question! unfortunately yes you will since it's entirely based on the workspace your part of and agnostic to other workspaces.
Some workarounds I've done for that though are that you can have single board guests in a workspace, so depending on how your boards are structured, you could just let them create a board in their paid workspace, and then add you to it. As long as you're only one one board in their paid workspace, they won't be charged for you. And then you can have your own paid workspace with your other boards, and you could add that other user to _one_ of your boards without being charged for them. Does that make sense?
@Brittany Joiner Thanks a lot, I assumed it. I think I'll do without Trello, because the system is really expensive for a start up. With these payment systems, you can spend truly considerable amounts. I will look for some valid alternative in terms of price / performance ratio. Thank you very much for your advice. Greetings
@Cdn sounds good! would genuinely be curious what you find that's comparable and better in terms of price and features. I might do a video comparing the two!
@Ciccio Panza ah yeah i should do a trello and asana video! I did one about click up and trello - both great tools, i kinda see them as different things. Been a while since I've played with asana so maybe i try out again soon
@Brittany Joiner Don't get me wrong. Trello's GUI is unbeatable! Except that, in the Asana free plan, the assignment of subtasks to members is free: essential! Plus, if I'm not mistaken, the Calendar view is also free.
Every single platform I have tested is, in my opinion, extremely expensive with their per user / month plans. I doubt any small startup will be able to pay for their free features with this payment system. If, like mine, a company has a minimum of seven / eight employees and many projects to work on, the bill at the end of the year is really unaffordable. If I could, I would suggest everyone to charge a little more for Premium features, but freeing them from "per user" formula. In my opinion they would have a lot more Premium users.
@Ciccio Panza yeah i did see calendar view in there, but you can get calendar view for free in trello, and i can't remember how subtasks work in asana, but in trello you can have checklists, but you do have to pay for "advanced checklists" which let you assign dates and users to the checklist items.
And yeah, i definitely think you're right about the per user thing - it gets expensive quick and really tough, but it does seem like so many tools do that. I think one thing that would help is having like "view" and "edit" and "admin" roles, and then charging based on the edit and admin roles (which is basically was Trello Enterprise does with the multiboard guests, but admittedly its still pretty pricey for non-guest/editors/admins)
@Brittany Joiner "in trello you can have checklists, but you do have to pay for" advanced checklists "which let you assign dates and users to the checklist items". Exactly what I was saying: in Asana it's free, and that's already one thing. In any case, the winner will be the one who disengages from the "per user" logic and proposes a flat rate for a Premium version, regardless of the number of users per project or workspace. You know, there are so many of them out there (I have counted more or less about thirty) who offer more or less the same solutions that I really don't think they will be able to sail in good waters forever if they don't differentiate the offers ...
@Brittany Joiner Well ... I hadn't come across it and that sounds interesting to me. I'll take a look later! Thank you very much. With your videos and your suggestions you have been really precious!
@Ciccio Panza happy to help!! Im a huge trello fan, but will be the first to admit it's not for everyone and doesn't perfectly solve every use case, and i just want to help folks find the right solution!
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