Looking for a Trello alternative? An honest comparison

I’ve always liked how Trello makes work feel visual: lists and cards you can pick up and move, and a whole project on one screen. Morrow is a board too. The difference is who the board is for. Trello is built for sharing, and if other people work on your board, it’s the better tool. Morrow is a personal board with a small, chosen plan for today on top of it, no Done list at all, and a companion: a small cloud that starts and ends the day with you.

I make Morrow, which makes this the maker’s view, not an independent review. What I say about Trello comes from trello.com and Atlassian’s help centre, read on 18 October 2026, with a link to the page behind every claim.

What Trello does better

Most of it comes down to working with other people and other tools. According to Trello’s own pages:

• Made for sharing. Invite people to a board or a whole workspace. The free plan allows up to 10 collaborators in a workspace, and the paid plans have no limit.²³
• A real free plan. Free includes up to 10 open boards per workspace and unlimited Power-Ups.³⁴
• Power-Ups and automation. Add-ons that connect other tools, and built-in automation that runs a set number of times a month, depending on your plan.³⁵
• Capture from your inbox and Slack. A personal Inbox that turns emails and Slack messages into cards.⁶
• Your calendar beside your cards. Planner connects Google or Outlook calendars, and on the paid plans you can drag cards into open time.³⁷
• Apps everywhere. In the browser, on Mac and Windows, and on iPhone and Android.⁸

If more than one person works on your board, I’d choose Trello and stop reading here. Morrow can’t share a board at all.

The biggest difference: a board that keeps you company

A Trello board waits for you. You open it, read it, decide what matters, and when you close it, it doesn’t know how your day went. On a shared board that’s fine, because the board is the record everyone looks at. On a board you use alone, it leaves all the remembering to you.

So Morrow comes with a companion: a small cloud in the corner of the app. I drew it myself, and it’s how Morrow talks to you, in short notes with buttons that say what they do. There’s no chat window and nothing to type a prompt into.

• It starts your day. The first time you open Morrow in the morning, it asks whether you want your brief: what you finished yesterday, where you left off and what’s on today.
• It helps you choose, when you ask. Press Help me choose and it suggests a few cards for today, each with a reason you can check. Nothing goes on Today unless you put it there.
• It notices. A card that hasn’t changed in weeks, with an offer to break it into small steps, and a card you keep moving forward. After some time away it says “There you are.” and names the card you last worked on.
• It ends your day. At the hour you choose, it offers to close the day with you, which takes about two minutes, and then it says good night.

You can tell what it’s doing from its face: it thinks while it reads, smiles when you tick a card off, and falls asleep when you leave it alone. It never counts streaks or hands out points, and most of what it says it works out from your own board, on your device, without AI. Trello has AI too, on its paid plans. It can summarise a card or write a checklist from its title,¹⁰ and Plan My Day in Planner suggests blocks of focus time for your cards in your calendar, which you accept or decline.⁷¹⁰ That plans the day by time. The cloud leaves the time to you and helps with the what.

No Done list, on purpose

On a typical kanban board, a card travels from left to right: To do, Doing, Done. Trello lets you set up your lists however you like,¹ and for a process several people share, that left-to-right shape makes a lot of sense: anyone can see where a piece of work stands.

On a board you use alone, I think the pipeline works against you. The Done list grows every week, finished work stays in view next to the things you still have to do, and finishing a card means carrying it across the board. I wanted to move away from that kind of kanban, so Morrow never creates a Done list. You tick a card and it leaves the board. Lists in Morrow name a kind of thing, like On my plate or Background, never a stage, so nothing in the layout suggests a card should be travelling anywhere. What you finished isn’t lost: Progress counts it.

When the tick is the only way off the board, it has to mean something. A tester, Marco, pointed out that it didn’t always: “If I press the checkmark, it means I’ve completed it. But I haven’t completed it, I’ve simply removed it.” He was right, and Progress was quietly counting dropped cards as finished ones. Now you can delete a card without it counting as done.

Today, on top of the board

A board shows everything at once. That’s its strength, and first thing in the morning it’s also the problem. On a Trello board, a plan for today is something you build yourself, for example a list called Today, or blocks of time in Planner.⁷

I built Morrow around a different idea: keep everything on your board, but only focus on a few things today. Today is built in and sits above the board. It holds the cards you put there, up to five by default, and every card has a plus that puts it there. When the day is full, Morrow tells you, and adding one more means taking one off or raising the number on purpose. The rest of the board stays where it is, out of the way until you choose from it again.

A card is a page

A Trello card has a description, checklists and attachments, each as its own part of the card.¹ I’ve described Morrow’s cards as superpowers inside cards, as if Trello and Notion had a baby, and I mean that as a compliment to both. A Morrow card opens into one page you write in, with headings, checklists, tables, pictures, quotes and link previews, in the order the work needs.

What closing the day looks like

When the cloud offers to close the day, it takes about two minutes: you see what you finished, and what didn’t get done gets a decision. A card you put on today and didn’t finish comes back the next morning with four choices: today, a new date, park it on the board without a date, or done.

Your meetings beside Today

Trello’s Planner connects Google or Outlook calendars, and on the paid plans you can drag cards into open time.⁷ Morrow reads any calendar address (Google, Outlook, Apple, or anything with an ICS link) and shows your meetings beside Today with the free time between them, on its one plan. You can drag a card into a free stretch between two meetings. It never gets a start time, and Morrow never writes to your calendar.

Morrow and Trello side by side

Trello’s prices are in US dollars, per user, as trello.com lists them, and may differ in your country. Check trello.com for the current plans.

What Morrow doesn’t do

This matters more on the Trello page than on most, because so much of what Trello does involves other people or other tools. You can’t share a Morrow board, invite a guest or assign a card to anyone. There are no Power-Ups and no automation rules, and nothing turns emails or Slack messages into cards. Apart from calendar addresses and your phone’s share sheet, Morrow doesn’t connect to other tools. There are no native apps in the app stores: Morrow is a web app you install from your browser on your laptop and phone, with its own icon and window, and it works offline. And there’s no free plan after the first month.

Which one should you use?

Stay with Trello if your board has more than one person on it, if Power-Ups or automation carry part of your work, or if you need a free plan for the long run. It’s very good at those things, and Morrow doesn’t try to compete there.

Morrow is worth a month if you use Trello on your own and your board has grown past what you can take in at a glance. The same goes if your Done list has quietly become the longest list you have. It also fits if what you want each morning is a short answer to what today is for, from a companion that also helps you end the day, with cards that hold your notes as well as your tasks.

Bringing a Trello board into Morrow

Trello is one of the two apps Morrow imports from directly (Notion is the other). Every member of a Trello board can export it as JSON, on every plan.⁹

• In Trello, open the board menu, choose Print, export, and share, then Export as JSON, and save the page that opens.
• In Morrow, open the profile menu, choose Import & export, then Import board, Trello or Notion, and pick that file.

The board becomes a new project in Morrow. Open lists become lists, and open cards become cards with their description, checklists, labels and due dates. Archived cards stay behind, and so do comments and attachments. Morrow doesn’t rename your lists, so a Done list arrives as a list called Done, with its cards still open. Ticking those off, or deleting the list, is a good first job on your new board.

Questions

Can I bring my Trello board into Morrow?

Yes. Export the board from Trello as JSON and import the file in Morrow. Each board becomes a project, with its lists, cards, checklists and labels.

Does Morrow have a Done list?

No. In Morrow you tick a card off and it leaves the board, and Progress counts it as finished. A Done list you bring in from Trello stays as you made it, until you delete it.

Can I share a Morrow board?

No. Morrow is a personal workspace. If you plan with other people, Trello is the better fit.

Is Morrow free, like Trello?

Not for good. Morrow has a free first month with everything on, counted from the day you sign in. After that it’s €6 a month or €54 a year. You don’t need a card to start. Trello has a free plan.

Does Trello have a companion like Morrow’s cloud?

Trello has AI on its paid plans, including Plan My Day, which suggests focus time for your cards in your calendar. Its husky, Taco, is the brand’s mascot.¹¹ Morrow’s cloud is a companion inside the app: it brings your morning brief, notices cards that have been waiting and closes the day with you, and it leaves the decisions to you.

Is this comparison independent?

No. I make Morrow, and I wrote this page. Every claim about Trello is linked to trello.com or Atlassian’s help centre, so you can read the source yourself.