What is kanban?

Kanban is a visual workflow management system that helps teams track tasks, limit work items that are in progress, and improve efficiency. Originally designed for the manufacturing industry, kanban is now widely used in software development, marketing, sales, HR, and more. If you’re new to kanban, check out this guide on how kanban boards work and how to implement a kanban workflow for your team.

Best Trello alternatives for kanban boards

Trello is a great starting point, but it isn’t the best fit for everyone. Let’s look at the top 8 Trello alternatives, analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, pricing, unique features, and reviews.

  • >Zoho Tables

    Zoho Tables

  • asana

    Asana

  • monday.com

    monday.com

  • ClickUp

    ClickUp

  • airtable

    Airtable

  • Jira

    Jira

  • notion

    Notion

  • microsoft planner

    Microsoft Planner

1. Zoho Tables

Zoho Tables has an intuitive kanban view built into every single table. With work management at its core, Zoho Tables offers a range of features that help you organize work, track information, and collaborate with your team. It's ideal for teams of all sizes, from enterprises to freelancers and solopreneurs.

Strengths

Automation: Zoho Tables lets you automate repetitive tasks in your workflow with a simple trigger-and-action logic.

Collaboration: The kanban view also lets you comment on individual cards, @mention your teammates, share files, and assign tasks to your team.

Data relationships: The data in your kanban cards aren't siloed anymore. You can link data in different fields/tables, look up, roll up, edit, and add new data—all from one view.

Powerful mobile app: Every solution built on their powerful iOS and Android apps is essentially a standalone mobile app solving a specific problem. The compact mobile app is also optimized to support the device you use, making the kanban experience seamless.

Drawbacks

Since Zoho Tables is new to the market, the number of out-of-the-box integrations it has is limited. However, the product offers REST APIs to build your own integrations.

Zoho Tables offers extensive customer support, including building a solution based on your requirements, absolutely free of charge.

The tool has a forever free plan while also offering a pricing plan at /user/month, billed annually.

The most adaptable and user-friendly solution for managing any type of job requirement is, without a doubt, Zoho Tables. It blends lovely simplicity with strong functionality that provides its users with countless opportunities.

- Eduardo Beracasa, CEO - Proactivo

2. Asana

If Trello feels basic, Asana is a complicated, but powerful, project management tool that offers kanban boards for complex project management.

Strengths

Flexible views: Switch between multiple views like kanban, timeline, and list.

Strong collaboration: Assign tasks, set dependencies, and comment on tasks.

Automation & integration: Integrate with popular tools like Slack, Google Workspace, GitHub, and more.

Suitable for large teams: Asana works well for large teams with extensive project management requirements.

Drawbacks

Steep learning curve: Initial setup comes with a steep learning curve and requires spending time and resources on training the team.

Unintuitive interface: It's difficult to navigate and find tasks with changed assignments.

Asana offers a free plan and their pricing plans start from $10.99/user/month, billed annually.

It could be a bit more intuitive to use and less complicated.

- Verified Asana User, G2

3. monday.com

monday.com is highly visual work management software with kanban, Gantt, and table views.

Strengths

Drag-and-drop automation: It has easy automation setup with custom rules.

Customizable dashboards: Easily create visually appealing dashboards to make data-driven decisions.

Extensive integrations: monday.com supports extensive integrations with your favorite tools.

Drawbacks

Steep learning curve: Too many features make figuring out the tool and setting it up difficult.

Ineffective mobile app: Its mobile app lacks flexibility and doesn't support filtering, sorting, etc. It's not ideal for staying on top of work on the fly.

Confusing pricing model: Users often report that understanding the pricing model is difficult.

monday.com offers pricing plans starting at $12/user/month. It also offers a free plan.

It doesn't really function the way I wanted it to; I had to fit its workflow and it felt difficult to change.

- Verified monday.com user, Capterra

4. ClickUp

ClickUp is another Trello alternative that goes beyond kanban boards. ClickUp combines tasks, docs, and communication tools on a single platform.

Strengths

Free plan: It has one of the most generous free tiers with unlimited users.

Built-in docs and chat for teams: Create documents and collaborate directly within the tool.

Native time tracking: Build custom timesheets and see individual tasks and time entries.

Drawbacks

Performance issues: It requires frequent reloading and becomes slow when the data scales.

Crowded interface: Too many features on the interface make it difficult to understand how the tool works for new users.

Pricing plans start from $7/user/month.

While they are continuously adding new features, I think there are missing pieces that need to be prioritized. I use it daily, and I still find features that does not exist. In addition to that, I frequently encounter bugs and the app tends to get laggy. These are basic features that can be focused on in the future.

- Verified ClickUp User, G2

5. Airtable

Airtable is a low-code/no-code work management tool that recently moved into the app-building space, combining kanban boards with database capabilities. It’s ideal for enterprises that need custom workflows, automation, and data organization.

Strengths

Customizable: Like all work management tools, Airtable is also highly customizable.

Multiple views: Data can be viewed in various ways including grid, kanban, calendar, gallery, timeline, etc.

Automation capabilities: Users can automate repetitive tasks in a few simple clicks.

Drawbacks

Expensive: Small businesses often find Airtable expensive.

Not ideal for everyone: Since Airtable is currently focusing on the enterprise market, its features are now less accessible for SMBs and individual users.

Unintuitive: If you’re new to kanban, figuring out how Airtable works as a whole may be a difficult and time-consuming task.

Pricing starts from $24/user/month. Although Airtable has a free plan, it has very limited features.

Our startup was initially attracted to Airtable due to its comprehensive features. However, when our financial circumstances changed and we needed to adjust our plan, we found Airtable's support to be lacking. While they did respond to our communications, there was a distinct lack of flexibility or understanding regarding our situation. Despite numerous attempts to negotiate and propose alternative solutions, the responses we received were rigid and dismissive of our particular circumstances. This experience has shown us that while Airtable may be a practical tool for stable businesses, it may not be the best fit for startups that need agility and understanding from their service providers. Based on our experience, we recommend startups to carefully consider the terms of their contract and the level of customer support before choosing Airtable.

- Verified Airtable User, G2

6. Jira

Jira is built for agile teams, offering scrum and kanban boards, issue tracking, and sprint planning. If your team follows Agile or DevOps methodologies, Jira is a good choice.

Strengths

Customizable workflows: Tracking task progress through the project lifecycle is made easy.

Powerful reporting: Jira gives improved visibility into projects, along with ways to manage workload and monitor key metrics.

Deep integrations: Developers love Jira’s integrations with tools like Bitbucket and GitHub.

Drawbacks

Not ideal for beginners: If you’ve just begun exploring kanban, Jira might be too complicated for you.

Not ideal for non-developers: Core features and the interface are primarily designed for software developers, thus making it difficult for other users.

Jira offers paid plans starting from $7.53/user/month, in addition to the forever free plan.

It doesn't seem to make much sense. People don't know how to use it. It's not user-friendly at all, so everyone ends up frustrated from the managers setting up the tasks to the team members collaborating on them. It just doesn't seem intuitive. It's also slow and glitchy as anything. It takes forever to load, comments disappear, and so on...

- Verified Jira User, Capterra

7. Notion

Notion is a hybrid of kanban boards, note-taking, database, and project management that can be customized to fit your needs.

Strengths

Customizable workspace: The infinite canvas in Notion makes it easy to create anything you want—a kanban board, doc hub, knowledge base, etc.

Great for content management: Its deeply-structured data organization makes it a favorite for knowledge-driven teams.

Drawbacks

Lack of automation in free plan: This means users have to handle repetitive tasks manually, making work less efficient and scalable.

Performance issues: Users often experience slow loading times or lag when working with complex pages.

Lack of logs: Audit logs are only available for enterprise users, and that makes it difficult for users in other pricing tiers to keep track of changes made to their workspaces.

Pricing starts from $12/user/month and they also have a free plan.

Sometimes it gets resource heavy on my system, and I begin to think 'this is just a note taking application! why's it eating up so much of my RAM?' but it's not too bad I guess.

- Verified Notion User, G2

8. Microsoft Planner

If your team already uses Microsoft 365, Microsoft Planner comes as part of the package. It's a work management tool that's integrated with Teams, Outlook, and OneDrive.

Strengths

Microsoft ecosystem: Microsoft Planner seamlessly syncs with Microsoft’s ecosystem, making it easier for teams operating here.

Multiple views: Other than kanban, the tool also offers boards, lists, and calendars.

Drawbacks

Lack of functionality: Users report that the tool doesn’t come with advanced functionalities like other dedicated work or project management tools.

Limited compatibility: While the tool works well within the Microsoft ecosystem, its compatibility with other third-party apps is limited.

Lack of a free plan: The tool only offers a free trial, not a forever free tier.

Microsoft Planner has both annual subscriptions and one-time purchase plans. Pricing starts from $10/user/month, paid annually.

Microsoft Planner's functionality is quite basic, which becomes evident when scaling project complexity or team size. Its limited features make it challenging to effectively manage projects with more than two people, as it lacks robust options for assigning people and setting due dates to subtasks, which are crucial for detailed project management.

- Verified MS Planner User, Capterra

How to choose the right kanban tool?

With so many kanban tools available, picking the right one can be a task. Here are a few key questions to ask when evaluating one:

  • Can the tool accommodate all of your unique requirements—both simple and complex?
  • Is the tool user-friendly and easy to adapt? Will the training time be minimal?
  • Does your tool integrate well with all the other software you use?
  • Is the tool affordable? Does it lock you in to long-term contracts?
  • Does the tool enable collaboration within your team and across teams in your organization?
  • Does the tool offer a free trial, so you can test before you commit?

Get started with Zoho Tables

All the tools listed above go beyond kanban boards. But while all these tools excel in specific areas—like budgeting, resource allocation, and project management—choosing a tool that unifies the work management experience is usually the smartest choice.

Zoho Tables is highly customizable, comprehensive work management software that combines the best of all essential features to:

  • Plan and track work

  • Collaborate with your team

  • Streamline and automate workflows

  • Store and manage data

Zoho Tables also offers ready-to-use templates to help you get started right away!

Start your kanban journey now!

Get Started