Work management platform Trello introduces no-code automation features

Trello, the web-based, Kanban-style list-making app backed by tech giant Atlassian, today launched Standard, a new tier of Trello specifically tailored for small and medium-sized teams. Alongside Standard, the company lifted Trello’s legacy limit of one integration or add-on per free board and worked to increase no-code automation accessibility with new workflow features for all users.

In 2020, there was a sharp increase in the demand for workflow management tools as the pandemic induced a transition to remote, hybrid, and flexible work. A recent Nemertes Research survey found almost half (45%) of enterprises expect to invest more in team collaboration apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Airtable. And 78% of users now believe their company’s collaboration platforms are “very important” to their work, according to Wakefield Research.

Standard plan

Trello’s new Standard tier dispenses with the tight admin controls and process-heavy functionality found in the Premium (formerly called Business) and Enterprise plans. It adds unlimited boards and advanced checklists, previously a Premium feature, that break projects into checklists items with due dates and assigned owners. Custom fields let users add specialized fields for data on the front of their Trello cards, including text, numbers, drop-down lists, checkboxes, and dates. Starting with Standard, the automation commands limit bumps up to 1,000 per month.

As for the price point — $5 per month or $6 billed monthly per member — it slots just under Premium, which costs $10 per month, or $12.5 monthly per member. Enterprise plan pricing remains the same at $17.50 per user with additional volume discounts.

Enhanced automation

Beyond the new subscription offering, Trello today announced that Premium subscribers can now use unlimited automation commands, while Free tier members get an unlimited number of Power-Ups — i.e., tools and connectors to platforms — per board. More than 200 are available as of this week, including connectors for Jira, Confluence, Slack, Google, and Dropbox, as well as automations like Card Repeater, which automatically puts regular tasks on repeat. Most Power-Ups are free, as before, but some require a paid subscription to third-party services.

Trello also gained an automation feature in Quick action remediation, which lets users write automation rules in-line rather than jumping into Trello’s Butler workflow orchestration dashboard. Now Trello can prefill the most common automation commands so users only need to finish the prompt to tell the platform what to do when the command is triggered, like sorting to-do lists by due date. Another new capability, Shareable automation commands, allows users to add automation commands to other boards, while Snapshot reports lets them set Trello to email reports of status cards or other relevant information on a schedule.

The renewed focus on automation comes after Trello, which has over 50 million users, rolled out new board views, card capabilities, and integrations for third-party data earlier this year. Those visibility enhancements continued the platform’s series of technical upgrades from automation tools in 2018 to administrative plug-in controls in 2019.

“Trello is easily the most powerful and configurable project management tool out there for free users. With this new Standard tier at $5, it also becomes one of the most affordable project management tools for teams. We wanted to make it easy for any team member to expense the solution that works for them, instead of needing to jump through hoops for procurement approval,” Trello cofounder and CEO Michael Pryor told VentureBeat via email. “In fact, most of the teams that use Trello today adopted it all on their own, without a directive from their company. Team leads love that you can add any new person to a Trello board and, without training, they can immediately start managing projects with it.”