How does Trello pricing work? (Here's an explainer)

[#1]

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. 

[Ajay _view26_]

Thank you @Brittany Joiner  for the clear explaination on how to go about selecting Trello plans! 😄

[Kevin Tuei]

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. 🙌

[Brittany Joiner]

@Kevin Tuei and @Ajay _view26_ thanks for the feedback!! Happy to help!!

[Cdn]

@Brittany Joiner thank you so much for your precious info.

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?

Cheers!

[Brittany Joiner]

@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?

[Cdn]

@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

[Brittany Joiner]

@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]

@Brittany Joiner Asana. Check the free plan ;-) Cheers

[Brittany Joiner]

@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

[Ciccio Panza]

@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.

[Brittany Joiner]

@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)

[Ciccio Panza]

@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]

@Ciccio Panza have you seen rock? https://rock.so/plans/pricing/ I think they're kinda close to this with the managers vs non-managers roles. 

[Ciccio Panza]

@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!

[Brittany Joiner]

@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!

[Katherine Krupka]

Hi @Brittany Joiner - I know this is ancient history already, but I discovered (and now love) your videos! Question:  You say "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."   Do you have a video on this someplace? I'd love to learn how to do this. I'm bootstrapping, but also need to have due dates for people and tasks. I was intending to put them into checklists, but sounds like you have a good way to link separate assigned cards. Many thanks! :-)

[Deleted user]

@Brittany Joiner do you have an email address that I can reach you at? I have quite a bit of  billing questions as I am just now trying out the app to determine if it is what our company needs. Thanks. 

[Brittany Joiner]

@Katherine Krupka just saw this comment! so sorry for my delayed response here. Here are some videos where I talk about that! https://youtu.be/5FBqOMbIhNc and https://youtu.be/IMaZ3tso914!

[Brittany Joiner]

@[deleted] i would encourage you to share your billing questions in this thread - that way if i can't answer them, there might be some other folks here who can! 

[Deleted user]

So, my main question is about billing for seats. If I have 6 managers who will be adding cards and tasks, with one of the managers responsible for 10 individuals who will be responding or updating tasks for his cards, will I be paying for the 6 original seats, or will I have to include the 10 other individuals? Also, if I have customers who will be observers, but may have actions, will they also have to pay for a seat? I am looking at this from the Premium plan right now. Thanks. 

[Brittany Joiner]

@[deleted] You'll be paying for anyone who is in those boards, specifically who is in more than one board. So if those 10 individuals are only in one board, you won't have to pay for them (you can add them as single board guests and just add them to the board and not the entire workspace). And in that case you'd only have to pay for 6 seats. Same thing with the customers - if each customer is only on one board, you can make them observers and wouldn't need to pay for them. But if they will be on more than one board you'd need to pay for them.

The easiest way to think of it is: who is going to need any sort of access to more than one board?  (Doesn't matter if it's observing, or full admin/edit access - anyone who needs to be part of more than one board.) Those are the people you'll be paying for. 

[Jillian Hood]

@Brittany Joiner Thank you for this explanation. I'm trying to find some workarounds so we're not having to upgrade. You said "you can invite as many people as you want to a single board" but is that for the free plan? I thought we could only have 10 on a board otherwise it would be view only from April. Help!

Could I have a standard account and a free account? That way I could have boards with large numbers of single users (in Standard account) and smaller boards (in free acount) so the same people aren't counted twice. Would that work? Thanks 

[Brittany Joiner]

@Jillian Hood i made this video a while ago so the inviting as many people as possible statement is before these new changes. So you will need to upgrade your workspace to a paid plan to invite more than 10 users to a board. Also, it will start being view only at the end of May... the April date is when you cannot add more people if you're over the limit. 

I wouldn't recommend having multiple accounts and workspaces to try to get around all of this because 1) it's going to cause confusion down the road, and 2) it makes things a bit more complicated. Instead, what I'd do is have one account and one workspace, upgrade yourself ($5/mo for the standard plan), and then add as many folks as you want to just one board in that space. For instance, you could do that and have 100 people in a board in there, and only pay for yourself. You'd only pay for people who you add to more than one board in that workspace.