Trello vs monday.com [2026]: Which Project Management Tool Is Right for Your Team?

If you’re choosing between Trello and monday.com, you’re comparing two fundamentally different tools. Trello is the gold standard for simple Kanban boards — visual, intuitive, and perfect for small teams who think in cards and columns. monday.com is a full Work OS built for complex workflows, cross-department collaboration, and teams that need more than just Kanban.

Quick Verdict: monday.com wins for growing teams, complex projects, reporting, and scalability. Trello wins for simplicity, pure Kanban workflows, and the best free plan in project management. Your choice depends on whether you need a focused task board or an all-in-one platform.

We’re a certified monday.com partner with 110+ implementations under our belt. We’ve migrated dozens of teams FROM Trello TO monday.com — and we’ve also told teams to stick with Trello when monday.com would be overkill. This guide gives you the honest breakdown.

Who Is Each Tool For?

Trello Is Built For:

Freelancers and solopreneurs managing personal task lists or simple client projects. We’ve seen hundreds of freelance designers, writers, and consultants use Trello to manage 5-10 client projects simultaneously. One board per client, lists for stages (Pitch → In Progress → Review → Complete), and cards for individual deliverables. Simple, visual, and fast.

Small teams (2-10 people) who need shared visibility without complex workflows. Trello shines when everyone can see the full board at a glance. A 6-person marketing team can manage their content calendar, social posts, and campaign tasks on 2-3 Trello boards without anyone getting lost.

Kanban purists who want the cleanest board experience available. If your team thinks in swimlanes, WIP limits, and card flow, Trello’s Kanban implementation is the industry gold standard. Drag-and-drop feels smoother than any competitor, and the board-first design means nothing gets in your way.

Budget-conscious teams who need a free plan with unlimited users. Nonprofits, community groups, and bootstrapped startups love Trello because you can onboard 20 volunteers or team members without paying a dime. No other tool offers this — monday.com caps you at 2 free users.

Teams with simple projects where “To Do → Doing → Done” is enough structure. If your work doesn’t need dependencies, resource allocation, or multi-view timelines, Trello gives you exactly what you need without the overhead.

monday.com Is Built For:

Growing teams (10+ people) managing multiple projects across departments. When your team hits 15-20 people, you need more than Kanban boards. You need timeline views so leadership can see deadlines, workload views so managers can balance assignments, and dashboards so everyone knows project status without checking 10 different boards.

Complex workflows that need Gantt charts, timelines, workload views, and dashboards. We worked with a construction company managing 30 concurrent projects. They needed to see which crews were overbooked, which projects were behind schedule, and which clients hadn’t been invoiced — all in one view. Trello couldn’t do this. monday.com handled it easily.

Cross-functional collaboration where marketing, sales, ops, and leadership need shared visibility. When your campaign launch involves 4 departments, everyone needs to see the same data in different formats. Marketing sees the Kanban board, leadership sees the dashboard, project managers see the Gantt chart — all pulling from the same source.

Teams outgrowing spreadsheets who need automation, reporting, and scalability. If you’re managing projects in Excel or Google Sheets, monday.com is the natural upgrade. You get the flexibility of spreadsheets (custom columns, formulas, sorting) plus automation, notifications, and real-time collaboration.

Organizations needing CRM, project management, and workflow automation in one platform. monday.com’s Work OS approach means you can manage sales pipelines, marketing campaigns, hiring workflows, and operations boards in one system. Trello requires stitching together multiple tools to achieve this.

Real Example: We migrated a 45-person creative agency from Trello to monday.com because they needed to see all 80 client projects on one timeline view. Their creative director was spending 6 hours a week manually checking Trello boards to see who was overloaded. monday.com’s workload view gave her that visibility in 30 seconds.

Key Insight: Trello isn’t a “lite” version of monday.com — it’s a different tool solving a different problem. Teams that force monday.com complexity onto simple workflows waste money. Teams that force Trello simplicity onto complex workflows lose productivity.

The question isn’t “which is better?” — it’s “which fits your workflow?” A freelance graphic designer managing 8 client projects doesn’t need monday.com’s enterprise features. A 50-person operations team managing cross-department workflows will quickly outgrow Trello’s single-board structure.

Pricing Comparison: Trello vs monday.com

Here’s the full pricing breakdown for 2026:

Plan	Trello	monday.com
Free	Unlimited users, 10 boards, unlimited cards, unlimited power-ups	2 users, 3 boards, 200 items
Entry Tier	Standard: $5/user/month	Basic: $9/user/month (3-seat minimum)
Mid Tier	Premium: $10/user/month	Standard: $14/user/month (3-seat minimum)
Advanced Tier	Enterprise: $17.50/user/month (50-user minimum)	Pro: $24/user/month (3-seat minimum)
Enterprise	Custom pricing	Custom pricing

Winner: Depends on your team size.

For small teams under 10 people, Trello is significantly cheaper. A 5-person team costs $25/month on Trello Standard vs. $45/month on monday.com Basic (with the 3-seat minimum).

For growing teams, monday.com’s richer feature set justifies the price. A 20-person team on monday.com Standard ($280/month) gets dashboards, timeline views, automations, and reporting that would require expensive power-ups on Trello.

Critical Difference: Trello has NO seat minimum on paid plans. monday.com requires 3 seats minimum, even if you only need 1 paid user. This matters for small teams where only 1-2 people need premium features — Trello lets you pay for just those seats, while monday.com forces you to buy 3.

Annual Pricing Discounts: Both platforms offer discounts for annual billing. Trello typically gives 15-20% off for annual plans. monday.com offers 18% off for annual billing. If you’re committing long-term, run the numbers both ways — the annual savings can be significant for 10+ person teams.

See full pricing details: Trello pricing | monday.com pricing

Free Plan Showdown: Trello Destroys monday.com

If you’re a startup, freelancer, or small team testing project management tools, Trello’s free plan is unbeatable.

Feature	Trello Free	monday.com Free
User Limit	Unlimited	2 users
Boards	10	3 boards
Items/Cards	Unlimited	200 items
Power-Ups/Integrations	Unlimited	No integrations
Automations	1 per board	No automations
File Storage	10 MB per file	500 MB total
Mobile Apps	Yes	Yes
Guest Access	Yes ✅	No

Winner: Trello by a mile.

Trello’s free plan gives you unlimited users, unlimited cards, and unlimited power-ups — you can run a 10-person team on the free plan indefinitely. monday.com’s free plan caps you at 2 users and 200 items, making it essentially a trial tier.

If budget is your #1 constraint and you’re okay with Kanban-only views, Trello’s free plan is one of the best deals in SaaS.

Real Example: We worked with a nonprofit managing 50+ volunteers. They ran their entire operation (event planning, volunteer scheduling, donation tracking) on Trello’s free plan for 2 years before upgrading to Premium. Total cost: $0. That same setup on monday.com would have required a paid plan from day one.

The only real limitation on Trello’s free plan is 10 boards max. If you need more than 10 active boards, you’ll need Standard ($5/user/month) or higher. But for most small teams, 10 boards is plenty.

Kanban Boards: Trello Is the Gold Standard

Trello was born as a Kanban tool. Every other feature — timelines, calendars, dashboards — was added later. monday.com built Kanban as one of many views.

Trello’s Kanban Experience:

Trello’s drag-and-drop card movement is smoother and more responsive than any competitor. When you move a card from “In Progress” to “Done,” the animation is instant — no lag, no jank. This sounds trivial until you’re moving 50 cards a day and every other tool feels sluggish by comparison.

Board-first design means everything is optimized for the Kanban view. You’re never fighting the interface to see your cards. Lists scroll horizontally, cards stack vertically, and the whole board fits on one screen without excessive scrolling.

Unlimited boards (10 on free, unlimited on paid) let you structure work however makes sense. One board per client, one board per project, one board per sprint — whatever fits your workflow.

Card templates, custom fields, labels, checklists are all native. You don’t need power-ups to add basic metadata. Create a card template for “New Client Onboarding” with pre-filled checklists, due dates, and labels — then clone it for every new client.

Power-Ups extend Kanban functionality without cluttering the core experience. Want card aging (visual indicators for stale cards)? Enable the Card Aging power-up. Need swimlanes? Enable the Custom Fields power-up. The base experience stays clean.

monday.com’s Kanban Experience:

Kanban is ONE of 8+ views (Timeline, Gantt, Calendar, Chart, Workload, Map, Form). The board view is clean and functional — you can drag items between groups, apply filters, and customize columns — but it’s not as polished as Trello.

Groups = columns in monday.com’s Kanban view. You can’t easily move groups around like you can rearrange Trello lists. This becomes awkward when your workflow changes and you need to reorder stages.

The advantage? monday.com lets you switch between Kanban, Timeline, Gantt, and Calendar views of the same data. Show your team the Kanban board, show leadership the Gantt chart — same underlying information, different presentations.

Winner: Trello for pure Kanban.

If your team lives in Kanban boards and rarely needs other views, Trello’s implementation is the industry benchmark. If you need Kanban AS PART OF a broader project management toolkit, monday.com’s multi-view approach wins.

When Trello’s Kanban Breaks Down: Around 100+ cards per board, Trello starts feeling cluttered. Scrolling becomes tedious, finding specific cards takes longer, and you lose the “see everything at a glance” advantage. At that scale, monday.com’s filtering, search, and alternative views become essential.

Views & Visualization: monday.com Offers More Options

View Type	Trello	monday.com
Kanban Board	Yes (core view)	Yes
List View	Yes	Yes
Timeline View	Yes (Premium+)	Yes
Gantt Chart	Via power-ups	Yes (Pro+)
Calendar View	Yes (Premium+)	Yes
Table View	Yes	Yes
Dashboard/Chart View	Via power-ups	Yes (Pro+)
Map View	Yes (Premium+)	Yes
Workload View	No	Yes (Pro+)
Form View	Via power-ups	Yes

Winner: monday.com.

monday.com gives you 8+ ways to visualize the same data. You can show marketing the Kanban board, leadership the dashboard, and project managers the Gantt chart — all pulling from the same underlying boards.

Trello requires power-ups (paid add-ons) to unlock most non-Kanban views, and even then, the experience isn’t as seamless as monday.com’s native views.

Who needs this: Teams managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders. If you only need Kanban, Trello’s simpler approach is an advantage, not a limitation.

Real Example: We worked with an event planning company managing 20 concurrent events. They used monday.com’s Calendar view to see all event dates, Timeline view to track vendor dependencies, and Workload view to balance staff assignments. The same data, three different lenses. Trello couldn’t do this without juggling three separate boards and multiple power-ups.

The flexibility matters most when stakeholders have different needs. Your CEO wants a high-level dashboard. Your project manager wants a Gantt chart. Your team wants a Kanban board. monday.com lets everyone see what they need without creating three separate systems.

Automations: Different Philosophies

Both platforms offer automation, but they’re built differently.

Feature	Trello (Butler)	monday.com
Free Plan Automations	1 per board	None
Paid Plan Automations	Unlimited (Premium+)	250/month (Standard), 25,000/month (Pro+)
Setup Method	Visual rule builder	Sentence-based builder
Trigger Types	Card moved, due date, button clicked, checklist completed	Status change, date arrived, item created, column changed, time-based
Complexity	Simple rules (if-then)	Multi-step recipes with conditions
Custom Code	No	Yes (via apps and integrations)

Trello’s Butler Automations:

Visual rule builder makes automation accessible to non-technical users. “When a card is moved to Done, check all items and archive the card” requires zero coding — just pick triggers and actions from dropdown menus.

Board buttons are underrated. You can add custom buttons to your board that trigger multi-step actions. We built a “Weekly Review” button for a client that automatically sorted cards by due date, archived completed cards, and created a summary comment. One click, five actions.

Card/list automations handle the repetitive stuff. Set due date reminders, automatically sort cards by priority, create recurring tasks every Monday morning. Simple workflows that save 30 minutes a day.

Easy to learn — most users set up their first automation in under 5 minutes. The interface is intuitive enough that you don’t need training.

monday.com’s Automations:

Sentence builder feels like writing instructions to a smart assistant. “When status changes to Done, notify John Doe and move item to Archive.” You pick triggers, actions, and conditions from dropdown menus that form a readable sentence.

More triggers give you finer control. Status changes, date arrivals, time-based triggers, column updates, item creation, and integration events (when a Slack message arrives, when a form is submitted).

Action chaining lets one trigger fire 5+ actions. When a sales deal closes, automatically create project kickoff tasks, notify the delivery team, update the revenue dashboard, send a Slack message, and schedule a kickoff meeting. All from one automation.

Integration automations connect monday.com to external tools. When a Typeform submission arrives, create a monday.com item. When an item moves to “Client Review,” send a branded email via Gmail. These cross-tool workflows are harder to build in Trello.

Winner: Tie (depends on your needs).

Trello’s automations are simpler and unlimited on Premium plans. monday.com’s automations are more powerful and integrate deeper with external tools — but you’re capped at 250/month on Standard plans.

If you need simple task automation (move card → check items → archive), Trello wins. If you need cross-board automations, integration triggers, or complex workflows, monday.com wins.

Watch Out For: monday.com’s automation limits. 250 automations per month on Standard plans sounds like a lot until you have 5 active boards with 10 automations each. Suddenly you’re burning through 1,500 executions/month. You’ll need Pro ($24/user/month) for 25,000 executions. Budget accordingly.

Power-Ups vs Integrations: Trello’s Unlimited Advantage

Feature	Trello	monday.com
Free Plan Add-Ons	Unlimited power-ups	None
Paid Plan Add-Ons	Unlimited	200+ integrations (Standard+)
Marketplace	200+ power-ups	200+ integrations + custom apps
Popular Integrations	Slack, Google Drive, Jira, GitHub, Confluence	Slack, Zoom, Gmail, HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams

Trello’s Power-Up Model:

Power-ups extend Trello’s functionality — each power-up adds a specific feature (calendar view, custom fields, voting, time tracking). You can enable unlimited power-ups on the FREE plan (massive advantage).

Popular power-ups:

• Calendar Power-Up — See due dates in a calendar view
• Custom Fields — Add dropdowns, checkboxes, numbers to cards
• Card Repeater — Recurring tasks
• Slack — Post card updates to Slack channels
• Jira Integration — Link Trello cards to Jira issues
• Time Tracking — Log hours directly on cards
• Voting Power-Up — Team members vote on cards

The genius of Trello’s model: you customize your workspace without paying extra. A nonprofit can use Google Drive, Slack, and Calendar power-ups on the free plan. monday.com charges for equivalent integrations.

monday.com’s Integration Model:

Integrations connect monday.com to external tools — CRMs, communication platforms, cloud storage, and developer tools. Most integrations require Standard plans or higher.

Popular integrations:

• Slack — Post board updates to channels
• Gmail — Create items from emails
• Zoom — Attach meeting links to items
• HubSpot/Salesforce — Sync CRM data
• Zapier — Connect to 3,000+ apps
• Microsoft Teams — Embed boards in Teams channels
• Outlook — Sync calendar events

monday.com’s integrations are deeper and more robust than Trello’s power-ups. The Salesforce integration syncs bidirectionally — update a deal in monday.com, it updates in Salesforce automatically. Trello’s integrations are typically one-way.

Winner: Trello for free/small teams. monday.com for enterprise integrations.

Trello’s unlimited power-ups on the free plan is one of the best deals in project management. monday.com’s integrations are more robust but locked behind paid plans.

If you’re integrating with Salesforce, HubSpot, or building custom apps, monday.com’s API and marketplace ecosystem is stronger. If you’re a 5-person team that needs Slack notifications and Google Drive access, Trello gives you that for free.

Collaboration Features: monday.com Goes Deeper

Feature	Trello	monday.com
Comments	Yes	Yes (called Updates)
@Mentions	Yes	Yes
File Attachments	Yes (10 MB free, 250 MB Premium)	Yes (500 MB free, 5 GB Standard+)
Guest Access	Yes (unlimited on paid)	Yes (free guests on all plans)
Real-Time Collaboration	Yes	Yes
Activity Log	Yes	Yes
Document Collaboration	Via power-ups	Yes (WorkDocs native)
Internal Notes	No	Yes (private updates)
Email to Board	Yes	Yes

Winner: monday.com for team collaboration.

Trello’s collaboration is basic — comments, mentions, attachments, and activity logs. It works fine for small teams but lacks depth for complex projects.

monday.com adds:

• WorkDocs — Collaborative documents embedded in items (like Notion but inside monday.com). Write project briefs, meeting notes, and specifications without leaving the platform.
• Private updates — Notes visible only to you or specific teammates. Great for internal observations you don’t want clients to see.
• Rich text updates — Formatted comments with embeds, tables, code blocks, and images.
• Guest permissions — Granular control over what external stakeholders can see/edit. Share specific boards with clients without exposing your internal process boards.

If your team needs more than “comment and attach a file,” monday.com’s collaboration tools are significantly richer.

Real Example: We set up a legal team on monday.com where paralegals could add private notes to case items that only attorneys could see. Trello couldn’t support this — every comment is visible to everyone on the card.

Reporting & Dashboards: monday.com Wins Big

Feature	Trello	monday.com
Native Dashboards	No (via power-ups)	Yes (Pro+)
Custom Charts	Via power-ups	Yes (50+ widget types)
Cross-Board Reporting	No	Yes ✅
Real-Time Metrics	Via power-ups	Yes
Shareable Reports	No	Yes (public/private links)
Filters	Basic	Advanced (multi-condition)

Winner: monday.com by a landslide.

Trello doesn’t have native reporting or dashboards — you need paid power-ups like Screenful or Placker to get analytics. Even then, reporting is limited to single boards. You can’t pull data from 10 Trello boards into one dashboard.

monday.com’s dashboards (Pro+ plans) give you:

• 50+ widget types — Charts, numbers, timelines, progress bars, battery widgets, embedded docs
• Cross-board views — Pull data from 5, 10, 20+ boards into one dashboard
• Real-time updates — See live project status, workload, budget, deadlines
• Shareable links — Send read-only dashboards to stakeholders who don’t need full platform access

We built a dashboard for an agency CEO that showed:

• Revenue from closed deals (CRM board)
• Active projects by status (Project board)
• Team workload by department (Capacity board)
• This month’s budget vs. actuals (Finance board)

All live, all in one screen. That’s impossible in Trello without exporting data to Google Sheets and building external dashboards.

If reporting is critical (leadership visibility, client updates, budget tracking), monday.com is the only real option here. Trello simply wasn’t built for this.

AI Features: Both Offer Intelligent Assistants

Feature	Trello (Atlassian Intelligence)	monday.com (monday AI)
Available On	Premium+ plans	Standard+ plans
Smart Suggestions	Yes	Yes
Auto-Summarization	Yes (card summaries)	Yes (update summaries)
Content Generation	Yes	Yes
Automated Task Creation	No	Yes ✅

Trello’s Atlassian Intelligence:

• Card summaries — Condense long comment threads into bullet points
• Smart suggestions — Recommend due dates, labels, assignees based on patterns
• Content generation — Generate card descriptions from prompts

monday.com’s monday AI:

• Update summaries — Summarize long update threads in seconds
• Content generation — Generate item descriptions, email text, status updates
• Formula assistance — Help build complex formulas
• Automated item creation — Generate tasks from meeting notes or emails

Winner: Tie.

Both AI features are useful but not game-changing. Trello’s AI is simpler; monday.com’s AI is more integrated with workflows. Neither is a primary reason to choose one platform over the other in 2026.

The AI features are nice-to-haves, not must-haves. If you’re choosing between Trello and monday.com, focus on views, automations, scalability, and pricing — not AI assistants.

Scalability: When You Outgrow Trello

Scenario	Trello	monday.com
1-5 users	Excellent	Overkill
5-20 users	Good	Good
20-100 users	Struggles	Excellent
100+ users	Not recommended	Excellent
Multiple departments	Difficult	Built for this
Complex dependencies	Via power-ups	Native
Enterprise permissions	Limited	Robust

Winner: monday.com for growing teams.

Trello works beautifully for small teams but hits a wall around 20-30 users. Beyond that, you’ll struggle with:

No cross-board visibility — Each board is isolated. You can’t see all projects across all boards in one view. When you’re managing 50+ boards, this becomes a massive bottleneck.

Limited permissions — Board-level only. You can’t restrict access to specific lists, cards, or fields. Everyone on the board sees everything. This breaks down when you need to share some information with contractors but keep financials internal.

Weak reporting — Can’t aggregate data across boards. If you want to see total revenue across 20 client boards, you’re manually opening each board and adding numbers in a spreadsheet.

No resource management — Can’t balance workload across team members. You don’t know who’s overloaded or who has capacity without manually reviewing cards.

monday.com scales to thousands of users with:

• Cross-board automations and integrations — One action can update 5 boards simultaneously
• Granular permissions — Control access at board, group, column, and item levels
• Workload views — See every team member’s capacity and reassign tasks to balance load
• Dashboards — Real-time visibility across 50+ boards without opening each one

The #1 reason teams migrate from Trello to monday.com: They outgrew Kanban-only views and need timeline/Gantt/reporting.

Real Migration Story: A marketing agency came to us with 80 active client projects spread across 80 Trello boards. Their account managers were spending 90 minutes every Monday morning manually checking each board to update leadership on project status. We migrated them to monday.com and built one dashboard that pulled status from all 80 boards. Monday morning check-ins dropped from 90 minutes to 5 minutes.

Mobile Apps: Both Are Solid

Feature	Trello	monday.com
iOS App	Yes	Yes
Android App	Yes	Yes
Offline Mode	Yes ✅	Limited
Push Notifications	Yes	Yes
Full Feature Parity	Good	Good

Winner: Tie.

Both apps are well-designed and get regular updates. Trello’s mobile app is slightly smoother for quick card updates — add a card, move it to Done, attach a photo — all in under 30 seconds.

monday.com’s app handles complex workflows better. You can view dashboards, update multiple columns, switch between views, and manage automations. The interface is busier but more powerful.

Neither app will be a deciding factor in your choice. Both deliver what you need for mobile project management.

Customer Support: monday.com Offers More

Support Type	Trello	monday.com
Free Plan Support	Community forums	Email support
Paid Plan Support	Email (Premium+)	24/7 support (Standard+)
Live Chat	No	Yes (Standard+)
Phone Support	No	Enterprise only
Onboarding	Self-serve	Dedicated (Enterprise)
Knowledge Base	Yes	Yes

Winner: monday.com.

Trello’s support is bare-bones — mostly self-serve documentation and community forums. Premium plans get email support, but response times can be slow (24-48 hours is common).

monday.com offers 24/7 support on Standard+ plans, live chat, and dedicated onboarding for Enterprise customers. We’ve had support questions answered in under 2 hours on Standard plans — that’s significantly faster than Trello.

If support responsiveness matters (you’re running mission-critical workflows or onboarding non-technical teams), monday.com is the safer bet.

Industry-Specific Recommendations

For Marketing Teams

monday.com wins. Marketing needs campaign calendars, content pipelines, cross-team visibility, and reporting. Trello works for simple editorial calendars but falls short for multi-channel campaigns.

We’ve helped 30+ marketing teams migrate from Trello to monday.com when they needed better resource planning and stakeholder dashboards. The typical trigger: “We can’t see who’s working on what across 5 campaign boards.”

For Software Development

Trello wins for small dev teams (2-5 people). Simple sprint boards, bug tracking, and GitHub integration work great. The Kanban flow feels natural for agile workflows.

For larger dev teams, consider monday.com vs Jira instead. Jira is purpose-built for software development with sprint planning, burndown charts, and release management.

For Creative Agencies

Trello wins for client work. Agencies love Trello’s visual simplicity for showing clients project progress. One board per client, easy guest access, unlimited free users for small teams.

The typical setup: internal project boards in monday.com (for resource planning and reporting), client-facing boards in Trello (for visual simplicity and client collaboration). Best of both worlds.

For Operations Teams

monday.com wins. Ops teams need dashboards, timeline views, workload management, and cross-department workflows. Trello’s single-board focus doesn’t scale for operational complexity.

We set up a manufacturing operations team with boards for production scheduling, inventory management, vendor orders, and quality control — all feeding into one executive dashboard. Trello couldn’t handle this level of interconnection.

For Nonprofits & Budget-Constrained Teams

Trello wins. The unlimited-user free plan is unbeatable for nonprofits managing volunteers and events. You can run a 20-person nonprofit on Trello’s free plan indefinitely.

One nonprofit we consulted for ran volunteer management, event planning, and donor outreach on 8 Trello boards for 3 years before upgrading to Standard ($5/user/month for 3 core staff). Total 3-year cost: $540. The same setup on monday.com would have cost $4,000+.

Migration Guide: Moving from Trello to monday.com

We’ve migrated dozens of teams from Trello to monday.com. Here’s the proven process:

Step 1: Export Your Trello Data

Trello allows JSON export of all boards. Go to Board Menu → More → Print and Export → Export as JSON. Save the JSON file for each board you’re migrating.

Step 2: Map Your Boards

Decide which Trello boards become monday.com boards. Often, multiple Trello boards consolidate into one monday.com board with groups.

Example:

• Trello: 5 separate client boards (Client A, Client B, Client C, Client D, Client E)
• monday.com: 1 “Client Projects” board with 5 groups (one per client)

This consolidation is one of monday.com’s biggest advantages — you can see all clients in one view, filter by client, and build cross-client dashboards.

Step 3: Recreate Your Workflow

monday.com’s structure is different:

• Trello lists → monday.com groups (columns in your board)
• Trello cards → monday.com items (rows in your board)
• Trello custom fields → monday.com columns (status, date, dropdown, text)
• Trello labels → monday.com status or label columns

Important: Don’t try to replicate Trello exactly. monday.com’s multi-column structure is more powerful — use it. Instead of lists for stages (To Do, In Progress, Done), use a Status column with those values. Then add columns for priority, deadline, assignee, budget — metadata that lived in card descriptions or custom fields in Trello.

Step 4: Set Up Automations

Rebuild your Butler automations using monday.com’s automation builder. Most Trello automations translate directly:

• “When card moves to Done → archive” becomes “When status changes to Done → archive item”
• “Send due date reminders” becomes “When date arrives and status is not Done → notify person”

monday.com’s automations are more powerful — you can trigger cross-board actions, send custom emails, and chain multiple actions from one trigger.

Step 5: Import Your Data

Use monday.com’s CSV import or third-party tools like Unito or Zapier to move your Trello cards into monday.com items.

CSV Import Process:

1. Export Trello board to JSON
2. Convert JSON to CSV (use a tool like Trello JSON to CSV Converter)
3. Map CSV columns to monday.com columns
4. Import via monday.com’s import feature

Pro Tip: Start with one pilot board. Migrate your smallest or simplest Trello board first, get the process right, then scale to the rest.

Step 6: Train Your Team

The hardest part of any migration is adoption. Give your team 1-2 weeks to adjust to the new interface. monday.com has a steeper learning curve than Trello, but most teams are fully productive within a week.

Training Tips:

• Run a 30-minute live walkthrough showing how to add items, update statuses, and use basic views
• Create a “Sandbox Board” where people can experiment without breaking real data
• Post quick video tutorials in Slack for common tasks (how to filter, how to switch views, how to use automations)
• Assign a “monday.com champion” on each team who becomes the go-to person for questions

Timeline: Expect 1-2 weeks for a team of 10-20 people. Larger teams or complex board structures may take 3-4 weeks. Don’t rush it — a smooth migration is worth the extra time.

Need help with migration? We’ve done this 40+ times. Book a free consultation to discuss your specific setup. We’ll map out which boards to consolidate, which automations to rebuild, and how to train your team for a smooth transition.

Trello Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Industry’s best Kanban board experience	Limited to Kanban view (other views require power-ups)
Unlimited users on free plan	No native reporting or dashboards
Unlimited power-ups on free plan	Weak cross-board visibility
Extremely easy to learn (5-minute onboarding)	Struggles with complex projects
Low cost ($5-10/user/month)	Limited automation on free plan
Great for visual thinkers	No workload management
No seat minimums	Basic collaboration features
Clean, distraction-free interface	Doesn’t scale past 20-30 users
Perfect for freelancers and small teams	No Gantt charts or timeline views (without power-ups)
Butler automations are powerful and unlimited (Premium+)	Each board is isolated — no cross-board workflows

monday.com Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
8+ views (Kanban, Gantt, Timeline, Calendar, Chart, Workload)	Steeper learning curve than Trello
Powerful dashboards with 50+ widget types	More expensive ($9-24/user/month)
Scales to thousands of users	3-seat minimum on all paid plans
Cross-board automations and workflows	Overkill for simple projects
Workload management and resource planning	Free plan limited to 2 users
Deep integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack)	Can feel overwhelming for small teams
Granular permissions (board/group/column/item)	Interface can feel cluttered
24/7 support on paid plans	Some features locked to Pro+ plans ($24/user/month)
Built-in CRM capabilities	Automation limits on Standard plans (250/month)
Real-time collaboration with WorkDocs	Not as polished for pure Kanban as Trello

Final Verdict: Choose Based on Your Team’s Needs

After 110+ monday.com implementations and dozens of Trello-to-monday.com migrations, here’s our honest take:

Choose Trello if:

• You have fewer than 10 people on your team
• Your projects fit the “To Do → Doing → Done” structure
• You love Kanban boards and rarely need other views
• Budget is tight and you need a free plan with unlimited users
• Your team struggles with complex software
• You’re a freelancer or solopreneur managing personal tasks
• Visual simplicity matters more than advanced features

Choose monday.com if:

• You have 10+ people and growing
• You need Gantt charts, timelines, workload views, and dashboards
• Your work spans multiple departments or teams
• You need reporting and leadership visibility
• You’re migrating from spreadsheets
• You want to scale to 50, 100, 500+ users
• You need CRM, project management, and workflow automation in one place
• Cross-board workflows and automations are critical

The Critical Question: Are you outgrowing simple task boards?

If your team says things like “I wish we could see everything on a timeline” or “I can’t tell who’s overloaded” or “Can we get a dashboard for leadership?” — you’ve outgrown Trello. That’s when monday.com becomes worth the investment.

Trello is NOT a lesser tool — it’s a different tool. Don’t pay for monday.com’s complexity if you don’t need it. But don’t force Trello’s simplicity onto workflows that need more structure.

One More Thing: Neither tool solves form updates, cross-board workflows, or email CC/BCC natively. We built BoardBridge to fill those gaps for monday.com teams. If you’re choosing monday.com and need forms that update existing items (not just create new ones), conditional email routing, or advanced cross-board automations, see how BoardBridge extends monday.com’s capabilities.

Need help deciding? We offer free 30-minute consultations to map out your workflow and recommend the right tool. No sales pitch — just honest advice from a team that’s set up both platforms hundreds of times. Book a call here.

Ready to compare more tools? Check out our guides on monday.com vs Asana, ClickUp vs monday.com, and Notion vs monday.com.