Alternatives (Power Ups? Add-Ons? ) to Butler for Card Move automation

William Dixon November 11, 2019

I was loving Butler until I hit my command limit, less than a week after I started using it. Can't understand why the paid limit is 250. That's < 9 commands a day. If you use Trello in any kind of regular capacity, it's far from enough and moving to Enterprise, where I'll get ~40/day (unless someone else is on my team) is expensive and I'd really not use any of the additional features...

Enough with the complaining: Do you have a favorite power-up or add-on which manages card content based on movement between lists?

TIA

2 comments

Outright Systems Pvt. Ltd. November 11, 2019

Alternative may be to hire someone who can build up everything using API.

William Dixon November 12, 2019

Thanks, that's a great idea, and I can do it myself.

Iain Dooley
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 13, 2019

@William Dixon is "Personal" the new term for Gold?

https://help.trello.com/article/1181-butler-features-and-quotas

If so it's 200, not 250 :) Business class isn't that much more expensive, and has a significantly higher quota limit.

I created a Google Apps Script framework for automating Trello to replace Butler:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-Integrations/Introducing-Trellinator-Automate-Trello-with-Google-Apps-Script/ba-p/925271

Here are a bunch of examples I've posted to the community over the past year or so:

https://gist.github.com/iaindooley

Jon-Paul Hale May 27, 2020

Except when you started with butler when the base paid plan was 10k commands per week and you built your business automation on it. Fantastic tool but getting screwed over by the corporate that doesn't understand it.

Then it gets brought by Trello, baked into Trello and grassroots users get hung out to dry. 200 commands doesn't get me through the average morning, let alone 1 day. We average 5500-6000 command transactions per week and that's not even busy.

Butler is an underestimated automation tool and they have provided no pathway forward for users that have done what the label on the box has said.

Don't get me wrong, happy to pay for the products, we paid from them when we didn't have to on freemium, because we were getting value. but it's rather hard to swallow the only option offered up of buying more seats to increase transactions.

Our Trello seat count just went up by a factor of 100, which makes it more cost-effective to outsource the automation rules to people in the Philippines, which is just stupid!

The outcome, we're going to abandon Trello for an alternative product, potentially still in the Atlassian stable, but all that achieves is for them to cut their lunch as the cost base on that is looking like 50% of Trello, which is nuts, or head to a competitor product that allows us to do what we need.

The simple answer is a reasonable paid path for increased use. If it runs at 10-50% of paying someone to sit at a desk and do the same boring mundane jobs that Butler does, then it's priced well. If it costs more, then it's just stupid. 

Iain Dooley
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 27, 2020

@Jon-Paul Hale If you pay for 20 seats you can have Enterprise which has unlimited Butler commands.

But yes it's frustrating, I created Trellinator to port all my customers' commands over to when they told me I couldn't use it as a consulting platform anymore (prior to it being changed into a power up and acquired by Trello).

If you have a bunch of Butler commands I could convert them for you, there's a link in my profile with more info.

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Jon-Paul Hale May 27, 2020

Thanks Iain, I'll check it out.

I since figured out the enterprise option trolling for other options, it wasn't offered as an option with the rant I left the Trello team.

Though still 20 seats is a significant step up from what we had, but is in the growth projection for the business in the future, just a long way from that presently with life getting in the road... As it does :D

Appreciate the pointers on Trellinator

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