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Flowboard vs Trello

Keep the five-minute start. Add the timer, the margin, and the client login.

Trello gets a board up faster than anything else in the category. Across 6,357 agency reviews of the six tools agencies actually use, UX and complexity is Trello's top switching trigger, at 273 mentions and 12%, the largest raw volume in the whole taxonomy. Missing features sits third for Trello, at 67 mentions, still the highest count of any competitor on that specific trigger. Trello's own pricing page names none of the things an agency bills against: not time tracking, not invoicing, not profitability, not margin, not a client portal. Trello's Premium card describes itself as best for teams up to 100 that need to track multiple projects and visualize work in a variety of ways. Flowboard runs the same boards and closes the loop after them: hours to margin to invoice, with a client login that is not a seat.

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For agencies who started on Trello and hit the wall somewhere around the fifth client.

Complete enough to replace the everything-app. Simple enough your clients actually use it.

Agencies churn on a pendulum. Trello is where most of them start, because a board takes five minutes and nobody needs training. Past roughly five clients the boards balloon, cards fall through, and the answer is to move up to an everything-app chasing power and one place for everything. Then the setup time and the clients who never log in push you back down to something simpler, and you outgrow that too. Across 6,357 agency reviews of the six tools agencies actually use, the two biggest reasons people switch are opposites, more power and more simplicity, and nobody serves the middle. Flowboard is built for the middle: the whole agency in one workspace, and a client view your clients will open.

What agencies say in their own words

agency reviews of the six tools agencies actually use
6,357agency reviews of the six tools agencies actually use
Trello agency reviewers name UX and complexity as their switching trigger, 12%, the largest raw volume in the taxonomy
273Trello agency reviewers name UX and complexity as their switching trigger, 12%, the largest raw volume in the taxonomy
Trello agency reviewers name missing features as their switching trigger, the highest count of any of the six
67Trello agency reviewers name missing features as their switching trigger, the highest count of any of the six

“So many features lacking or needing integration in order to work. No time tracking, no time estimating, no list view of products, no ability to have separate tasks with separate conversions on one card. All of these things make it very difficult to project manage”

2★, Design, 11-50, February 2021

“It's not possible to track the time that you spend on a project, because has not time tracker.”

3★, Marketing and Advertising, Self-Employed, November 2023

“This is not a robust project management software. That can be both a good thing and a bad thing depending on your preferences. We use Trello primarily for idea generation and collaboration and use a separate project management platform that has much more robust project management features and functionality.”

4★ (cons text), Marketing and Advertising, 11-50, January 2022

“No where near to microsoft project manager. I am not able to see the snapshot of how may team is placed and what's my company's current bandwidth.”

3★, Graphic Design, 2-10, June 2019

as reviewed on Software Advice

Feature comparison

FeatureFlowboardTrello
Time on the taskOne-click timer from the Kanban card, the List row, and the task detail panel, with the Play button sitting directly on the card and the rowThe words time tracking, timer, and timesheet are not present on Trello's pricing page, and no tier's published feature list names them. This comes from a Power-Up or an outside tracker, on that vendor's bill rather than Trello's, and Trello allows unlimited Power-Ups per board from the Free tier
Margin per clientPer-project and workspace-wide profitability computed from logged hours, with cost rate per hour returned to Owner and Admin onlyThe words profitability, margin, profit, and budget are not present on Trello's pricing page at any tier
Invoicing from tracked timeInvoice line items generated from time entries, grouped by team member or by task, and generating locks those entriesThe words invoice and invoicing are not present on Trello's pricing page at any tier
Client seatsFree and unlimited. Portal users live in a separate identity table and are never counted against the workspace member limitSingle board guests is a Standard tier feature line, and multi-board guests is an Enterprise tier feature line. Trello's pricing FAQ states that any Guest on more than one board within the Workspace is a Multi-Board Guest and is billed at the same rate as Standard or Premium Workspace members
Creative proofingPin annotation on the asset, four proof states, version history with per-version annotation counts, and a structured approve or changes-requested decisionThe words proofing, proof, annotation, and approval are not present on Trello's pricing page, and no tier's published feature list names them
Who has room this monthCapacity heatmap with one team member per row and a utilization percentage per cell, plus the per-project allocation behind it, and a capacity vs actual report against logged hoursPremium lists Views: Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard, and Map, plus Workspace views: Table and Calendar. The words capacity, workload, and utilization are not present on the pricing page at any tier
Automation runsNine trigger types, ten action types, condition evaluation, and run history with per-run detail, on the one plan250 Workspace command runs per month on Free, 1,000 on Standard, and Unlimited Workspace command runs from Premium
Plan structureOne plan, $39 per seat per month USD, no seat minimums$0 USD on Free, capped at 10 collaborators and 10 boards per Workspace. $5 USD per user per month on Standard and $10 USD on Premium, both billed annually. $17.50 USD per user per month on Enterprise, billed annually

Where Flowboard differs

The timer is on the card

The Play button sits directly on the Kanban card and on the List row, not only inside the task detail panel, so a teammate starts tracking without opening the task. Timer start, stop, and discard live in their own backend module, separate from generic time entry editing, so starting a timer is a first-class flow rather than a side effect of editing a row. So what: the timesheet is already written by Friday, and those same hours become invoice lines without being retyped.

One task model, three views, and nothing lost under a closed parent

Board, List, and Calendar run over the same task data, so switching view does not mean rebuilding the project. Subtasks carry completion counts on every task, dependencies are recorded as blocking and blocked-by, and recurring task templates run on a configurable schedule. Project list rows compute hours logged and member count in a single LATERAL join, rebuilt specifically so the list stays fast as the client count grows. So what: the eleventh client does not force a second tool alongside the boards.

Client access is a login, not a second board

Give a client access in Flowboard and they get their own login, by magic link or password, against a separate portal-users identity table rather than a seat in your workspace. Only workspace members count against the plan limit. Task, comment, and file visibility is scoped on the client surface, and the Preview as Client toggle filters your own screen using the same visibility rule the live portal uses, so the preview is a simulation rather than a mock. So what: a client with two workstreams costs the same as a client with one.

Margin per client, computed from hours already logged

Every hour your team logs updates that project's margin, per client, with no spreadsheet. Batch profitability runs across many projects at once and rolls up workspace-wide. Cost rate per hour is returned only to Owner and Admin, so members and clients never see internal cost rates, and utilization is measured against weekdays rather than calendar days. So what: you catch the overrun in week two, not at invoice time. Honest limit: the numbers come from hours already logged. There is no forecasting and no margin alerting.

What Flowboard does not have

No Gantt or timeline view. Trello Premium lists Timeline among its views, and if a timeline is the reason you are moving, this is the wrong tool. Board, List, and Calendar are the only views here, and Calendar places a task only if it carries a due date. No native mobile app: the mobile screens are mobile-optimized web views. No integrations marketplace, so nothing syncs to a tool outside the workspace. Portal branding is three fields, workspace name, logo, and accent color, on a Flowboard-hosted portal with no custom domain.

Keep the board that takes five minutes to set up. Add the timer on the card, the margin the hours already contain, and the client login that is not a seat.

Why agencies choose Flowboard over Trello

The billable layer is in the product, not in the Power-Up bill

Trello allows unlimited Power-Ups per board from the Free tier, so the ceiling is never Trello's quota. It is the Power-Up vendors' own subscriptions, each billed separately from the seat you already pay for. Blue Cat, whose Trello Power-Up catalog includes Forms and Reports, prices its Forms Power-Up free for 1 user and 10 responses a month, then $29 USD, $59 USD, and $99 USD per month for its Basic, Pro, and Business plans. That is one Power-Up. Time tracking, proofing, budgets, invoicing, and a client portal are not present anywhere on Trello's pricing page and appear in none of the four published tier feature lists, so each is another line on somebody's invoice. In Flowboard the timer, the proof, the invoice, and the client login are the product, on one plan at $39 per seat per month USD.

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The numbers you report on, without a reporting subscription

Trello Premium publishes Views: Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard, and Map, plus Workspace views: Table and Calendar. Past those views, cross-board reporting is generally a Power-Up: Blue Cat Reports lists $4.00 USD per member monthly and $39.00 USD per member annually, with a 7 day free trial on all accounts and no permanently free plan. Flowboard ships five purpose-built report engines behind one dispatcher, time and billing, project profitability, team utilization, invoice summary, and capacity vs actual, with saved reports and recurring email delivery to a named list of recipients. Time reports carry chart, table, and export.

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Client seats that stay free when the client gets a second workstream

Trello's pricing page carries single board guests as a Standard tier feature line and multi-board guests as an Enterprise tier feature line, and its FAQ states that any Guest on more than one board within the Workspace is a Multi-Board Guest and is billed at the same rate as Standard or Premium Workspace members. On Free, the ceiling is different: up to 10 collaborators per Workspace and up to 10 boards per Workspace, which is roughly ten clients. The same FAQ says Trello Standard and Premium are designed for all teams, and the Premium card describes itself as best for teams up to 100. Flowboard counts only workspace members against the plan limit, so a client contact on four projects costs what a client contact on one costs, which is nothing.

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Automations that do not meter, on the plan you already have

Trello meters Workspace command runs by tier: 250 per month on Free, 1,000 on Standard, and Unlimited Workspace command runs from Premium. Flowboard ships a visual editor with nine trigger types, ten action types, condition evaluation, and templated action fields that resolve against the triggering event at run time, plus run history with per-run detail. The deal-won trigger paired with the create-project action spins up the delivery project when a client signs. Flowboard sells one plan, so there is no tier to move up to for automations.

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Creative approval with a state, not a comment thread

Pin annotation sits directly on the asset, every proof tracks a current version number and a version count with a dedicated version picker, and annotation counts are surfaced per version. Reviewer feedback is a structured decision, approved or changes requested, recorded separately from the annotation comments, so approved is a queryable status transition rather than something inferred from text. The words proofing, proof, annotation, and approval are not present on Trello's pricing page at any tier.

Frequently asked questions

Move off Trello without starting over.

Flowboard ships import wizards for ClickUp, Asana, Trello, and CSV. You run them yourself from inside your workspace.

Keep the simple start. Bring your Trello boards over on the way in.

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Self-serve import from ClickUp, Asana, Trello, or CSV
You run the import yourself, no ticket required
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