# Trello

21 Hacker News commenters recommended Trello and 19 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend Trello for simple kanban boards that most teams can pick up quickly, with fewer features than Jira. Critics say it grew heavier and worse after Atlassian bought it.

## Why people recommend it

- Simpler than Jira with fewer features (4 comments): "Trello was a successful product despite having way less than 20% of jira's features" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46918661)) "Trello uses simplicity as a constraint, so users can't make quite as big a mess" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48264410)) "other task trackers like Trello are simpler and have less config options" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50001940))
- Good enough for most teams (2 comments): "Most any firm I've worked for could replace it with Trello or any Kanban style tool in a heartbeat." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47343605)) "at least 60% companies that use Jira could do better with just Trello" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48264213))
- Works well for personal use (2 comments): "we use Trello to track everything in our house" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47084960)) "Trello is still my goto for everything." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48441933))

## What people warn about

- Heavier and damaged after Atlassian (2 comments): "Used Trello a lot before it got sold to, and damaged by contact with, Atlassian." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49350203)) "Trello was great but got heavier too with all those fancy stuffs and colors." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909363))
- Missing features and customisation limits (4 comments): "jira/trello: ergonomics. to set them up correctly exactly the way i want would take me 20 hours" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47105813)) "there are some features Trello should just pay off the devs to get" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45975763)) "frustrated with limitations: wanted rows and decent performance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813336))
- Outages and slow performance (2 comments): "Trello just had a major multi-day outage that prevented commenting on or moving cards" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48266049)) "frustrated with limitations: wanted rows and decent performance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813336))
- Not open source or self-hostable (2 comments): "Trello does not work in Russia. You cannot install it on your server in the company's closed loop." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47910957)) "But, Trello is not open source, so its not an option for me anymore." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45805189))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Kanban CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kanban-cli.md): 9 recommend
- [Fizzy by 37signals](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fizzy.md): 8 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://trello.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Trello", https://hackerapproved.com/p/trello/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).