Trello vs Monday: Which one is better? (2023)

According to Capterra’s research, project management software can improve the estimation of a project timeline, ensure project resources are properly used, and boost team communication.

This certainly stands true — if the tool in question is any good.

One of the best ways to determine whether a tool is worth your time and money is through comparisons. So, today, we’re comparing another 2 project management superstars — Trello and monday.com.

We’ll compare Trello vs monday.com in detail and assess them in the following categories:

• Pricing,
• User interface,
• Task management,
• Team collaboration,
• Progress tracking,
• Administration,
• Integrations,
• Support, and
• Security.

Which tool will triumph today? Let’s find out!

Trello vs Monday overview

Both Trello and monday.com are intuitive work management tools suitable for beginners and experienced professionals alike. Though they share some similarities, we’ll delve into their differences today.

But first, here’s a quick overview.

Trello is a web-based collaboration tool geared toward Kanban project management teams. The software enables users to organize their projects into boards chock-full of different data about their projects’ performance.

Trello officially launched in 2011. In 2017, it was acquired by Atlassian, the software company that developed Jira. 

You can use Trello with Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices.

monday.com is a cloud-based work OS/work management system that focuses on workflow customization, team alignment, and productivity. 

The platform was launched in 2012. Today, it is one of the most popular work management tools geared toward businesses of all sizes.

You can use monday.com with Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS devices.

Here’s a quick comparison of Trello’s and monday.com’s features:

Feature	Trello	monday.com
Pricing	Free plan Paid plans start at $5 user/month	Free plan Paid plans start at $8 seat/month
User interface	Well-organized	Well-organized
Task management	Average	All-encompassing
Team collaboration	Notifications and reminders Card activity feed	Notifications and reminders Updates section
Progress tracking	Watch button Progress and time-tracking Power-Ups Activity log	Time-tracking and progress-tracking columns Activity log
Administration	Guest access Granular permissions	Guest access Custom roles Granular permissions
Integrations	300+	200+
Support	Workday support (Monday-Friday) Priority email support Help site Knowledge base	24/7 support Phone, email, or live chat support Help center Knowledge base
Security	Advanced	Advanced

Now, let’s compare these 2 tools in more detail.

Trello vs Monday pricing 1:0

Both Trello and monday.com are popular project management tools — but how much would they set you back each month?

Trello’s free plan is ideal for small teams or individuals looking to boost their project organization. It comes with many useful features, such as:

• Unlimited cards, 
• Unlimited Power-Ups per board,
• 10 boards per workspace, and
• Unlimited activity log and storage.

Trello’s paid plans include:

• Standard — $5 user/month,
• Premium — $10 user/month, and
• Enterprise — estimated $17.50 user/month (for 50 users).

The Enterprise plan can have as many as 5,000 users — in that case, you’d pay less per user each month. If your team is larger than that, contact sales to get a quote.

Trello also has a 14-day free Premium plan trial. The platform offers education and non-profit community discounts too.

monday.com’s free plan is based on 2 seats only. Its features include:

• Up to 3 boards,
• Up to 1,000 items within boards,
• Unlimited docs, and
• 500 MB storage and 1-week activity log.

monday.com’s paid plans include:

• Basic — $8 seat/month,
• Standard — $10 seat/month,
• Pro — $16 seat/month, and
• Enterprise — POA.

At monday.com, there’s a minimum number of seats you have to pay for. The prices above are for 3 to 40-seat teams — for larger teams, you’d have to contact sales.

monday.com also has a 14-day free Pro plan trial. As for discounts, the platform has a Student Program and discounts for nonprofits, startups, and educational organizations.

A unique advantage of monday.com is that users can buy end-to-end products that come with pre-set industry-specific features. These include:

• Projects,
• Dev, 
• Marketer, and
• Sales CRM.

Trello vs Monday pricing verdict

Overall, Trello is a better option than monday.com if you have a small team and a limited budget.

As long as you don’t mind the platform’s focus on Kanban, Trello has a great free plan for you to use — and a range of affordable paid plans for when you decide to expand your team.

Pricing	Trello	monday.com
Free version	Yes	Yes
Free trial	Yes	Yes
Starting price	$5 user/month (billed annually)	$8 seat/month (billed annually)
Refund policy	30-day refunds	30-day partial refunds
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello vs Monday user interface 0:1

A project management tool’s ease of use usually boils down to the user interface. If the platform isn’t user-friendly — it won’t manage to acquire long-term, loyal users.

Trello’s structure has only a few components:

• Workspaces (board navigation hubs),
• Boards,
• Lists, 
• Cards, and
• Board menu (the mission control). 

You use lists in Trello to build your project workflow and plan out your projects. Lists contain tasks and ideas, which you add to your boards in the form of cards.

Trello also empowers users to customize boards by:

• Changing the background (solid color or image),
• Color-coding cards or adding image card covers, 
• Using stickers, and
• Enabling dark mode (only iOS and Android devices).

For more accurate organization, you can also add custom fields (paid plans only). Additionally, you can avoid building boards from scratch by using Trello’s diverse ready-made templates, such as the one for building a product roadmap or another for optimizing your recruiting pipeline.

monday.com’s structure is slightly more complex — though the layout is just as clean.

The highest level in the structure is the workspace. Further work categorization happens through:

• Dashboards, 
• Boards, and 
• Workdocs. 

Users can also sort these in different folders and sub-folders.

Boards have their own structure and can contain:

• Items, 
• Sub-items, 
• Columns, and
• Groups.

You can customize your boards in various ways, starting with a board view change. Similar to Trello, you can change the display theme (light, dark, or night mode).

Manipulating group and status label colors, item and column size, and even item terminology is a given at monday.com.

There’s also the white label feature. This functionality lets users customize their accounts with their branding.

monday.com has a host of templates too, categorized by industries. 

You can also get those end-to-end products we mentioned, which are ready-made use case-specific solutions.

Trello vs Monday user interface verdict

At first glance, Trello seems easier to use. However, monday.com isn’t difficult to manage — it just appears more complex than Trello because it has more features.

Overall, neither platform has a huge learning curve to it, so both would be a good choice for total novices.

That said, customization is on a slightly higher level in monday.com, so the platform earns a point in this round.

User interface	Trello	monday.com
Structure	Clean	Clean
Layout	Clean	Clean
Customization	Average	Advanced
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello vs Monday task management 0:1

Project management tools often focus heavily on task management since tasks make for one of the most crucial parts of project planning. But not every software has the same, user-friendly system in place.

In Trello, cards represent your project activities or tasks, and lists group different tasks together.

When you click on a card, you open the card back where you input things like:

• Start and due dates,
• Descriptions, 
• Checklists, 
• Assignees, and
• Attachments. 

Cards can also have labels. With the Advanced Checklists feature (Standard and above plans), you can even assign checklist items to specific people. 

Some useful task management Power-Ups include:

• Card Repeater,
• Card Priority Badge, and
• List Limits.

As for board views, Trello has 6:

• Board,
• Table,
• Calendar,
• Dashboard,
• Timeline, and
• Map.

You can even see cards from multiple boards with the Workspace Calendar or Workspace Table view. 

Users across all plans also have access to a built-in automation called Butler. This feature handles action automation, dependencies, and more.

Building your board in monday.com includes adding tasks, columns, and groups. 

The columns are where you add the bulk of the information about your tasks. You can also explain tasks in more detail in the Item Card view. 

There are lots of columns to choose from, including Status, Timeline, Dependencies, and more. Users can also add descriptions and summaries to their columns.

monday.com has a customizable Dashboard view and 11 board views:

• Kanban,
• Table,
• Form,
• Gantt,
• Cards,
• Files,
• Calendar,
• Timeline,
• Workload, 
• Chart, and 
• Map. 

The platform offers pre-set and custom automations too. These enable users to reduce manual labor and automate their workflows.

Trello vs Monday task management verdict

Trello’s task management system isn’t bad at all, but it’s pretty average compared to monday.com’s. 

monday.com has more features overall, better customization options, and 11 board views. This makes it a superior task management tool and earns it a point in this round.

Task management	Trello	monday.com
Board/task views	6	11
Workflow automations	Yes	Yes
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello vs Monday team collaboration 0:1

Your preferred PM tool should enable effortless team collaboration and communication. Without features to support this, your project could easily fail.

Trello users mainly communicate via comments in the card activity feed. There, they can:

• Add, edit, or delete comments,
• @mention people, 
• Add attachments,
• React to comments with emojis.

Trello also has an advanced notification system you can customize to your needs. Users can set up due date reminders too, and even customize reminder intervals.

There’s no account data storage limit in Trello. However, the file upload limit per attachment is 10 MB for free and 250 MB for paid plans.

For further team collaboration features, choose Power-Ups, like:

• Miro (collaborative whiteboards),
• Board Chat,
• Forms, 
• Comment On Image (image annotations), and
• Whereby (video meetings).

monday.com users can add their notes in the Status column and communicate in the Updates section of each item. There, they can:

• Check the item’s activity log,
• Post, reply to, and react to messages, and
• @mention people and teams.

monday.com also has an extensive notification system. The platform’s advantage is that the email and bell notifications can be customized via automations.

You can also set up reminders:

• Deadline mode — see if items are completed, overdue, or have a deadline approaching, and
• Update reminders — use the Update Snoozer for board or inbox updates.

The file size limit in monday.com is 500 MB, but you don’t get unlimited file storage with any plan

Still, you get access to other incredible collaboration features, like: 

• File annotations, 
• Collaborative whiteboards, and 
• Workdocs. 

Plus, monday.com users can use the Workload view and widget to improve their workload management skills. 

Trello vs Monday team collaboration verdict

Trello may win over customers with its unlimited data storage. However, when you compare its team collaboration features with monday.com’s — there’s lots of room for improvement. 

In the end, it’s built-in features like workdocs and collaborative whiteboards that make monday.com so appealing to users. 

monday.com has made team collaboration hassle-free, which is why it earns a point in this round.

Team collaboration	Trello	monday.com
Built-in communication channels	Yes	Yes
Collaborative workdocs	No	Yes
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello vs Monday progress tracking 0:1

When dealing with multiple projects, how do you keep up with all your project tasks and activities? The answer is — you track progress diligently and as consistently as possible.

In Trello, you can sort lists, filter cards and labels, and search for cards and boards across your workspace.

The Cards page shows your assigned cards, and you can also use the Watch button to keep track of others’ cards.

Enhance progress tracking with Power-Ups too, such as: 

• Calendar,
• Card Aging, and
• Time Tracking & Reporting.

Trello can be integrated with time trackers like Clockify to enable project time management. The Amazing Fields Power-Up also proves useful since it lets you add progress bars.

The activity feed found in the Board menu lets you see all the activity since the board was created. 

As for reports, you can build them in Dashboard view. Alternatively, rely on analytics and reporting Power-Ups, like Insights and Dashcards.

Within an Enterprise workspace, you also get access to the Workspace Report page.

In monday.com, you can filter board information with:

• The search bar,
• People filter, 
• Quick suggested filter, and
• Advanced filter option.

Additionally, you can use Search Everything — a Google-like feature for your boards — and sort and subsort with the board-level sort tool.

Progress tracking is almost effortless as there’s a progress-tracking column. The time-tracking column also lets you measure the time spent on different items. 

monday.com’s activity log shows anywhere from 1 week up to 5 years worth of log history. Users can also get updates across all their boards in their inboxes.

The platform has impressive reporting features too, such as:

• Dashboards,
• Chart and Performance Insights views,
• Overview widget, and
• Pivot board. 

Trello vs Monday progress tracking verdict

The lack of a single, no-fuss progress-tracking solution makes Trello less appealing in this category. 

Time is of the essence when dealing with multiple projects, so you want to be able to check your task or project’s progress with a single glance. 

monday.com has straightforward progress-tracking features, so it earns a point in this round.

Progress tracking	Trello	monday.com
Activity log	Yes	Yes
Time tracking	Yes (integrations or Power-Ups)	Yes
Reporting	Yes	Yes
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello vs Monday administration 0:1

Advanced administration settings are a must for any PM tool since they give the user the necessary control over other members — and what they’re allowed to do within the workspace.

Trello has 6 types of users with varying permission levels:

• Invited members,
• Board members,
• Observers (Premium and Enterprise plans),
• Workspace members,
• Guests, and
• Board admins.

In free workspaces, everyone’s an admin. If you need more granular permissions, you need to upgrade your plan.

Guest access is available across all plans. However, multi-board guests may incur additional charges for paid plan users.

As a rule, Premium plan users have additional permissions settings. In the Enterprise plan, you can also assign an Enterprise admin.

By changing permission settings, you control:

• Membership restrictions,
• Board creation and deletion restrictions, and
• Invitations and commenting permissions.

Within settings, you can also set the boards to be workspace visible, private, or public. 

In monday.com, users can hold the following 5 roles:

• Subscribers,
• Guests,
• Team members,
• Admins, and
• Board owners.

Team members are further split into viewers and members based on their view-only (viewers) and editing (members) permissions.

Guest access is available with Standard plans and above. Meanwhile, custom roles come with the Enterprise plan only.

The 3 main types of permissions monday.com users can customize include: 

• Board, 
• Dashboard, and 
• Column permissions.

The Enterprise plan comes with some advanced admin settings — workspace and account permissions. 

Plus, Enterprise users get some additional admin control functionalities, such as:

• Panic mode — block the whole account in case you detect suspicious activity,
• Audit log — get access to account security-related activity log,
• Session management — control user session’s data from the admin panel, and
• SCIM provisioning — manage users and user data across different apps at once.

Trello vs Monday administration verdict

These 2 tools have a similar user role structure, but monday.com gets a point in this round because it offers custom roles too.

Better yet, monday.com’s Enterprise plan users get access to some additional features that further enhance admin control. 

Administration	Trello	monday.com
Advanced permissions	Yes	Yes
Custom roles	No	Yes
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello vs Monday integrations 1:0

You’ll hardly find a project management tool that comes with all the features you want. However, you can usually enhance your preferred one by integrating it with some of your favorite tools.

If you want to add more features to Trello, you can choose from 100+ integrations and 200+ Power-Ups.

While browsing the integrations directory, you’ll run into some all-time favorites, like:

• Google Drive,
• MailChimp, and
• GitHub.

Trello’s Power-Ups are another type of integration you can go for. 

The main difference is that some Power-Ups can add a feature to your Trello board — they don’t have to import or send data to another service (app or tool).

Keep in mind that some integrations may incur additional charges.

Users can also build their own Power-Ups with Trello’s API.

Like Trello, monday.com has an extensive library of integrations — you can choose from 200+ of them to enhance your boards.

Among those, you’ll find well-known tools, such as:

• Slack,
• Zoom,
• Stripe, and
• Hootsuite. 

monday.com also has a Trello integration, which lets users integrate their Trello workflows with their monday.com accounts.

Unfortunately, integrations are available only with Standard and above plans — and are quite limited depending on the plan you have. Right now, users get:

• 250 actions/month with the Standard plan,
• 25,000 actions/month with the Pro plan, and
• 250,000 actions/month with the Enterprise plan.

If you need to expand your account’s functionalities further, check out monday.com’s apps marketplace too. 

Trello vs Monday integrations verdict

Though both tools offer a great number of integrations, monday.com limits integrations across all plans.

In contrast, Trello not only has quite a few more integrations to offer — but also allows unlimited Power-Ups with all of its plans. So, it wins a point in this round. 

Integrations	Trello	monday.com
Number of integrations	300+	200+
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello vs Monday support 0:1

Customer support helps build trust between users and companies, and ensures user satisfaction through quick problem resolution.

At Trello, there are a few ways you can get answers to your burning questions.

The first option is Trello’s help site, where you can find its knowledge hub full of various help articles, guides, and other resources. 

You can get advice and tips from Trello users and experts in the Trello community as well.

Users can also contact support if they have account issues or billing and sales-related questions. Priority email support is also available, but for Premium and Enterprise plans only.

Note, however, that Trello doesn’t have 24/7 support. Instead, the support team is available Monday through Friday during regular business hours.

monday.com’s help center is home to its knowledge base, as well as a plethora of other resources, such as monday.com academy and video tutorials.

Users have access to daily live webinars as well, and the platform even has a webinar hub.

monday.com customers can also take part in the platform’s partnership programs and find advice and tips in the community forum.

Unlike Trello, monday.com offers 24/7 support. Users can get in touch with customer support via phone, email, and live chat.

The platform provides additional support services for Enterprise plan users, such as a 99.9% uptime SLA and a dedicated customer success manager. 

Trello vs Monday support verdict

Trello’s knowledge base can be super-useful on a daily basis, but there’s no 24/7 support to rely on.

monday.com, however, offers 24/7 support, a choice of communication channels, and a number of other resources to its users. Therefore, it wins this round too.

Support	Trello	monday.com
Knowledge base	Yes	Yes
24/7 support	No	Yes
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello vs Monday security 1:1

As project management tools usually contain all sorts of sensitive business information, the security measures must be top-notch.

Fortunately, both Trello and monday.com have thought about this.

Trello has a few certifications that are proof of the platform’s safety. Currently, it is compliant with:

• SOC 2 and SOC 3,
• ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27018, and
• GDPR.

Trello is also FedRAMP-authorized and PCI DSS-certified. 

Data security is a major concern at Trello, so the platform encrypts data both in transit and at rest. Trello even allows an encrypted full backup every 24 hours and does vulnerability scans on a weekly basis.

Some of Trello’s privacy features include 2-factor authentication and SSO.

You can learn more about Trello’s security practices by visiting its Trust Center. 

Much like Trello, monday.com also has an extensive security policy. The platform is compliant with:

• SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II, and SOC 3, 
• ISO/IEC 27032:2012, 27001:2013, 27018:2014, 27017:2015, and 27701:2019, and
• GDPR.

The platform is also HIPAA-complaint, but only on the Enterprise plan.

As for data security, monday.com follows Trello’s suit and encrypts it in transit and at rest. The platform also offers 2-factor authentication.

The Enterprise plan comes with other security features, such as SSO, IP restrictions, and integration permissions.

Find out more about monday.com’s security measures by visiting its Trust Center.

Trello vs Monday security verdict

Both Trello and monday.com take security seriously and have robust security policies in place. 

No matter what their needs may be, users can be sure their data will be safe on these platforms — so both get a point in this round.

Security	Trello	monday.com
Two-factor authentication	Yes	Yes
Data encryption	Yes	Yes
Relevant certifications	Yes	Yes
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello vs Monday verdict: 3:7

And the champion of this comparison is — monday.com! Here’s what the scoreboard says:

Category/Feature	Trello	monday.com
Pricing	1	0
User interface	0	1
Task management	0	1
Team collaboration	0	1
Progress tracking	0	1
Administration	0	1
Integrations	1	0
Support	0	1
Security	1	1
Total score	3	7

monday.com excels at task management, team collaboration, and progress tracking, so it has all the qualities of a reliable project management tool.

Still, that doesn’t mean Trello is a bad option. If you’re just starting out with project management and have an affinity for Kanban boards, Trello might be ideal for you.

In the end, you know best which features are a must and which you don’t need. So, compare the tools yourself to see which one actually makes a difference for your projects and workflow.

Looking for a Trello or Monday alternative? Try Plaky

Plaky is a free project management tool designed to help teams increase their productivity and accurately track project progress.

Plaky emerges as a fantastic Trello alternative due to its task management features — and the fact you don’t have to use a Kanban board for all your projects. While Plaky gives you 2 board views and an unlimited number of boards for free, Trello saves those features for paid plans.

One of Plaky’s fortes is that it also lets you add as many users and create as many projects and tasks as you want. The essential features are completely free, making it a great monday.com alternative for teams looking to slowly scale their businesses.

Among other things, you can also use Plaky to:

• Centralize all information, files, and documentation about different business aspects,
• Collaborate with teammates in real time via the comments section,
• Receive prompt notifications about task changes,
• Monitor board activity in the activity log,
• Track time spent on tasks with the Clockify integration, and
• Control what other users can see and do in the workspaces.

✉️ Have you ever tried Trello or monday.com? Which tool proved to be more useful and reliable? Share your thoughts by contacting us at blogfeedback@plaky.com, and we might include your answers in this or future posts. If you liked this blog post and found it useful, share it with someone you think would also benefit from it.