Markdown in Descriptions. The description you provide in the Power-Up admin portal will be used multiple places throughout Trello to share information to users about your Power-Up. It will be used in the Power-Up directory as seen here: It will also be used in future features like Power-Up landing pages, updates to the Power-Up menu, etc. Using Markdown for text formatting. Trello uses Markdown, the same syntax that Airtame relies on for editing its Homescreen overlay text. If you’d like a deep dive into using Markdown with Trello, feel free to check out this guide. Otherwise, here are the basics: To make text bold, add two asterisks on either side:.bold.

Trello is a multi-purpose task tracking application that brings fun and ease to project management. The people behind Trello surely understand what “user-friendly” means – by learning keyboard shortcuts and micro-features, you can multiply your efficiency in a snap. If you’re only getting started with Trello, this article should help you get on board in no time. But don’t miss it if you’re an experienced user – Trello holds dozens of hidden gems you are about to see. Did we spark your curiosity? Let’s dive into the depths of Trello tips and tricks!

Tips for Trello boards and lists

Customise board backgrounds to identify them immediately

If you use a bunch of boards in Trello, it’s not unusual to confuse them by looks and add cards or lists in the wrong place. To avoid situations like this, try customising the board background – Trello offers quite a selection to suit different tastes.

Starred boards

A quick and nifty method to manage the main view in Trello – prioritise your boards by starring them or drag and drop for even more personalisation.

Clone public boards

New users in Trello may encounter problems creating their first boards – different projects require specific approaches and list orders. Are you one of those who can’t decide which items should be added as labels, lists or checklists? Trello created a handy base of ready-made public boards to clone and customise. Or you can clone that board you saw on your colleague’s profile but was afraid to ask how they did it.

Add a list anywhere

Sometimes you may realise you’re missing one little list to clarify the whole board. Trello enables adding lists in any place you want – there are two ways to do it:

• double click between any two lists on a board
• double click any open board space to select where to add a new list

Now you can keep your workflow in check.

Magic spells for Trello cards

Add cards via email

To create new cards in Trello, you don’t even have to log in – all you need to do is send an email to your board’s email address, available in the board details (open the Menu in the right sidebar and select More, then Email-to-board Settings). To make sure everything falls into the right place, remember that each board and board member have unique email addresses.

When you’re sending an email-as-a-card to Trello, every part will be immediately transformed into a regular card’s elements:

• The email subject becomes the card’s title
• The body of the email becomes the card’s description
• The attachments in the email will be added to the card
• To add labels, type #labelname, #labelcolor or #labelnumber in the subject line (for two-word label names, join the words or use underscore, e.g. #ToDo or #To_Do)
• To add board members, type @username in the subject line or in the body text of the email

One more thing – in case you wanted to email comments to a particular card, each card has its own email address, too.

Quickly moving a card from one list to another

Did you start adding a card and realised you’re in the wrong list? Click “Add card” in the right list without saving the started card and everything you added will move to the newly opened card in the right list.

Drag and drop multiple attachments onto a card

You’re going to like this if you attach a lot of documents and media in Trello. Just select as many files as you want and drop them onto your card.

Create new cards from a spreadsheet or list

Add your to-do lists as individual cards in Trello with only one click. Copy the whole list (a column in a spreadsheet, or any other list of separated lines) and paste it into a new card. Trello will ask you if you want to keep them it in one card or split into separate ones.

Collapse completed checklist items

A simple way to save card space – click “Hide selected items” to collapse completed points and declutter your card!

Create multiple checklist items from a list or spreadsheet at once

Just like adding multiple cards from one list, you can create a checklist faster in a similar way. Copy an paste a fragment of a spreadsheet or other separated lines of text and paste into a new checklist. They will automatically change into separate points.

Drag and drop checklist items

The status of your tasks can changes dynamically, and so can your checklists. Change the order of items and whole checklists by dragging ad dropping each of them in the right place.

Embed YouTube videos

Do you want to draw attention to a video file you’re about to share in your card? Paste its URL in a separate comment and it will embed automatically.

Convert checklist items into cards

Did your checklist grow into a bunch of serious tasks that require separate cards for each? No problem – Trello has got you covered. Simply click on the checklist item and select “Convert to card”.

View all your cards in boards

Multitasker’s life: millions of cards, hundreds of lists, dozens of boards… Sounds like your everyday life? How are you holding on? Save yourself a minute in your busy day and go to your profile menu or visit https://trello.com/enteryourusername/cards to see all your cards in one place.

Mark cards done

The creators of Trello made sure you can pick the optimal way to celebrate this moment of glory:

1. Create a “Done” list on your board and move cards with finished tasks right there.
2. If you can’t live without deadlines, mark your cards done done by clicking the checkbox on the back of the card’s due date.
3. Create a label to signify “done” and use it to mark completed cards.
4. Create a “Done” checkbox using the Custom Fields Power-Up.
5. Pick a celebratory sticker, then drag and drop it to a card for extra fireworks.
6. Archive the card and make some room for new challenges.

Connect cards

This trick will save you a lot of hopping between cards if you’re working on two connected tasks. Attach cards together by copying one card’s URL to another card as an attachment, which will appear as a miniature including basic card information such as name, label, list, due date, etc.

Other hidden treasures in Trello

Power-ups

What makes Trello one of the most loved project management tools is the approach to planning and tracking activities: nice and easy. Minimum features, maximum productivity. However, the makers of Trello listened to their more advanced users and prepared a vast set of extensions called Power-Ups. In paid plans, you can choose the Power-Ups you like without limits (the free plan allows only one Power-Up per board).

Subscribe to lists/cards/boards

In case you’re not assigned to a card, but you want to stay up to date with new comments, attachments or other changes, use the “watch” feature to receive updates about the card. The same thing works for lists and boards.

Emojis

If you can communicate using emojis in most of the apps you use every day, why would Trello be an exception? Type in the name of an emoji in colons to intensify your message.

Text formatting in Markdown

Markdown is a simple “language” – or rather a set of shortcuts and characters – used for text formatting e.g. in messaging apps or social networks. Trello uses a simplified version of Markdown enabling basic text formatting options in the card content:

• For bold, mark your text in **double asterisks**
• For italics, mark your text in *single asterisks* or _underscores_
• For strikethrough, mark your text in ~~double tildes~~
• For inline code, mark your text in `single backticks`
• To add links, use [parentheses] to mark the anchor and (brackets) for the URL address, for example [Timenotes](https://timenotes.io)

These are the basics that will help you create card descriptions looking similar to text editors, which often comes in handy. If your desire for customised cards hasn’t been satisfied, check out more options in Trello Markdown formatting.

Search operators

Getting lost in your cards and boards can happen to anyone, and that’s why making friends with the search bar should be a priority on your to-do list. Apart from simply typing the phrase you are looking for, learning search operators will help you find necessary items in the blink of an eye. Check out these basic operators:

• @me will return all of your cards
• due:time returns all cards due in a given period, e.g. due:week will show carts with due dates in seven days
• label:color returns all cards with a label of a given colour
• is:status returns all cards with a given status, e.g. open or archived
• Has:item returns all cards with given added elements, such as comments, attachments or descriptions

There are many, many more search operators to use, but the best thing is you can combine them into tandems. For example, @me due:overdue -list:done will return all of your cards that are overdue and not done.

The magic book of Trello keyboard shortcuts

They say keyboard shortcuts are for lazy people, but what’s wrong with being lazy? Take a look at the cheat sheet below and start enjoying the benefits of the Trello Keyboard Users Club:

If the list above sparked your curiosity and you’re hungry for more, Trello keyboard shortcut guide features a few extra options.

That’s all for today!

Our article explores only part of all the clever features and tricks Trello has applied here and there. But these tips should be enough to turn boost your productivity and enhance the overall experience. Perhaps you’ll discover more effective ways to apply Trello in your projects and teams? Even small changes can make a difference when you look at the big picture!

Looking for even more ways to enhance your Trello experience? Check out our Timenotes Trello time tracking extension and learn how you can extend trello with even more functionality using Googlel Chrome Extensions.

There’s plenty of competition for Trello and the latest one on the market is Clickup.

Several teams have compared Clickup vs Trello and both tools have been widely adopted by multiple teams. But what’s the right tool for you?

As someone who used both the tools for several use cases extensively for multiple years, I’m going to talk in-depth about both the tools to help you decide.

Let’s jump in.

Clickup vs Trello: Comparison criteria

Before we get deep into the waters and start our comparison, here are all the criteria we’ll be using to compare Trello vs Clickup in detail:

• Features available in the two tools and how easy they are to use.
• Value for money — their pricing plans.
• Tools they integrate with.
• Pros and cons of the two tools.

Since both tools have several unique capabilities and some overlap, we’ll talk in-depth about each of these aspects, so you can take an informed decision.

An overview of Clickup

Clickup is an all-in-one productivity tool. It tries to replace every single tool in the market with features that you can add on to your account. It’s got checklists, status templates, features aimed at replacing even Google Drive.

If you don’t see a feature you need, Clickup probably has an integration with a tool that has that feature. Not only do they have feature-packed product, their support team is available throughout the day and even during the holidays.

Clickup has a free plan that allows businesses to try it before deciding if they should pay for it.

Features in Clickup

Since Clickup tries to be a jack of all trades, it boasts a massive list of features that enables you to do:

1. Process management
2. Task management
3. Time management
4. Customization to meet your team’s needs
5. Team collaboration
6. Reporting

Here are some of Clickup’s unique features:

• File storage (100 MB on the free plan)
• Mindmaps
• Recurring tasks
• Task dependencies
• Wiki docs
• Sprints
• Priorities
• Resource management
• Time Tracking, and more!

Everything in Clickup is customizable and can be made into a template. This is both a plus and negative point. Since the tool has so many features and can be customized to any extent, some believe to be getting maximum value for their money. However, there are many who find it overwhelming and feel it can get cluttered quickly.

Many use Clickup as a general productivity tool rather than a specialized agile scrum tool.

Clickup is available on all platforms including web, mobile, desktop, Alexa, Google Assistant, Chrome extension, and on Gmail.

Clickup pricing plans

Clickup’s pricing page is smartly designed to make people think they actually get more value than they actually deliver.

Just look at this screenshot of their pricing page:

At first glance, everyone’s going to be like “Unlimited members and tasks in free plan? Great!”

But what many don’t realize is, there’s restrictions on every other feature. This information is hidden deep in their expanded view of the pricing plan. It should also be noted that their free plan doesn’t include reporting features. That being said, Clickup does provide more features in their free plan.

Clickup also has an Unlimited plan that costs $9/member/month. This plan gives you the ability to bring in guests, view reports, and access to key integrations such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and more.

Their Business plan costs $19/member/month. This plan allows you edit task-ID, create private views, add time estimates to your tasks, and more!

Confusing? If you’re looking for a tool with simple pricing plan, you should give Zepel a try. There are no feature restrictions on all plans and your first five members are free forever.

Pros of using Clickup

Things we thought were a big plus with Clickup are:

1. A near end-less list of features (can also be a con).
2. Several views to help you stay productive — list, kanban board, calendar, Gantt chart.
3. Free to use with unlimited collaborators with limited features.
4. No credit card required to get started.
5. Includes a Chrome extension similar to Zepel.
6. Available on all platforms including voice devices like Alexa, Google Assistant.
7. Ideal for small teams and freelancers.

Cons of using Clickup

Some of the things we didn’t enjoy about Clickup:

1. Can be overwhelming to get started due to the number of features.
2. Lacks a dedicated scrum board.
3. Does not have functional reports like sprint burndown chart or cumulative flow diagram.
4. Missing developer-friendly capabilities like markdown to write descriptions and share code snippets.
5. Users have complained their mobile app isn’t great.
6. Is considered to be expensive when you want to upgrade to higher plans.

Reviews of Clickup

1. Review on G2:

'I like that it has all types of tools to be able to work with the different ways people approach things. I liked that there was an inbox feature.
I felt it was a bit overwhelming and had a steep learning curve. I also wish that I could add more than one person to each area for free. I run a small business and want my clients to see only their projects with my team members without having to create a new space entirely.
I found it tedious to have to tag myself in everything if I wanted it to show up in my inbox.'

2. Review on Capterra:

'Easy to use. Clear and intuitive interface. Easy to assign tasks for the week and update it. Calendar view is very efficient for planning weeks.
Limitation for saving views (for Guest AND for Member) in unlimited plan. To get all features we need to upgrade to Business/Enterprise plan and convert Guest to members: way too much expensive. A full import/export (JSON?) feature, not the current limited csv format, could improve compatibility with our internal custom tools. Moving a small bunch of tasks over the time is easy, but moving many tasks is quite annoying.'

Overview of Trello

Trello is probably the most popular project management tool in the market that allows you to do task management and track your team’s progress.

It's primarily a Kanban software. It lets you visually track progress on a Kanban Board and keep everyone in sync by using statuses. It’s got all the collaboration related capabilities like assignees, due dates, labels, comments, and more.

The use cases you can use with this tool are practically unlimited. I’ve seen people use it to plan a wedding, write a book, content calendar, manage marketing campaigns, build product roadmaps, and manage engineering teams.

The software is widely popular because you can try it for free without adding your card details, it’s easy to use, and you can collaborate with unlimited number of members on the free plan. However, there are some feature restrictions, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Features in Trello

Some of the key features in you'd find interesting are:

• Kanban boards
• Content-rich kanban cards
• Kanban board templates
• Public APIs
• Power-ups that give you more 3rd party capabilities like Gantt charts, list, and box view.
• Integration with tools like GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Slack, Box, Dropbox, and more.
• File attachments limited to 10 MB per attachment on free plan and 250 MB on paid plan.
• Real time activity feed and notifications.
• Checklists that can be used as a to do list or as a subtask for a specific card.
• All the traditional features in a project management software — assignees, due dates, comments, and labels.

Trello pricing plans

Unlike Clickup, its pricing plans are straightforward, simple, and easy to understand.

They offer three pricing plans:

1. Free plan: $0/member/month

The free plan allows you to collaborate with unlimited number of members, create unlimited number of cards, but only create 10 Boards per team.

Also, you are restricted to uploading files with a maximum file size of 10 MB and using one power-up per board.

2. Business Class: $12.50/member/month

The business class allows you to create unlimited number of boards per team. It also extends the file upload limit to 250 MB per file and allows you to use unlimited number of power-ups.

It gives you admin controls to manage permissions, export your data, restrict invites based on domain, and more.

This plan is ideal if you want to enable multiple views or need more capabilities for your team.

3. Enterprise: $17.50/member/month

The enterprise plan lets you set organization wide permissions, SAML SSO, administer power-ups, manage boards that are made public.

Pros of using Trello

In my experience using the tool for several years, these are some of positives about using this software:

1. Effortless get started. On boarding your team wouldn’t take a lot of time.
2. It does one thing and it does it really well — kanban board software for task management.
3. Tracking progress of your team is easy.
4. The tool is fast, responsive, and unlike Clickup, doesn’t feel like a bloated tool.
5. You won’t feel overwhelmed when using the tool.
6. Includes several kanban board templates that you can get inspiration from.
7. If you’re looking for more capabilities from it, you can always use a power-up to add new features to your board.
8. Integrates with 100+ tools including Zapier, GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Dropbox, Salesforce, Hubspot, and more.

Cons of using Trello

With simplicity comes a certain set of cons. And we faced them when we tried the tool:

1. Is not an ideal tool for medium-large size teams or squads.
2. If you use the tool collaboratively for more than 6 months, you’ll end up with a never ending pile of cards.
3. It can be hard to find the card you need when there are many of them. You’ll come to a point where both the vertical and horizontal scroll becomes endless.
4. There is no way to mark dependencies between work items.
5. Lacks a way to add estimation points if you want to use it as a scrum software tool.
6. Does not have a full-fledged agile features like other agile project management tools.
7. Lacks functional reports. You’ll have to enable them through third party power-up and pay extra for them.
8. Lacks / commands or developer-friendly capabilities like markdown.
9. Can’t view all tasks and subtasks in a single, hierarchical view.
10. Lacks custom fields, but you can use labels as a workaround.
11. Everything is just a card. If you’re a development team, this can get really messy to manage because simple ticket tracking isn’t enough to build products.

Reviews of Trello

1. Review on G2:

'Trello is an excellent tool for those who appreciate a minimal designed interface. The free version is very restricted in functionality and lacks the basic project management tool seen in other free applications. It is still great for individuals who simply need basic organization.
One thing I dislike about Trello is that it doesn’t have a lot of basic features when you begin a new board. lt really lacks common project management features seen on other applications you can use for free.'

2. Review on Capterra:

'Trello is great, it’s simple to use, and has loads of clever UX devices that make tracking and updating tasks a joy. We use it quite often within our organisation whenever something needs “organising fast” - we’re not expecting to track the progress of the entire project through it, but the occasional breakout.
There comes a point in every Trello boards life when the user will go “ok, now it’s time to move this all away from this tool” Task management is .. laborious at best, with no real way of tracking time, burndowns, productivity, velocity, or any other metric that tells a project manager if the job is “getting done”, it’s simply not built for that and trying to implement methods that will make it work, just result in frustration.'

Alternatives to Trello and Clickup

If you're still not sure about the two tools, here are some alternatives for you to consider.

1. Zepel

Zepel is the ideal tool for software teams. It doesn’t force you to work in isolated tickets and yet lets you build features together seamlessly.

Zepel’s hierarchy is natural:

• you create a Squad instead of a project.
• you create features instead of an epic.
• you add actionable work items inside a feature that can be tracked using Sprints or Kanban Board.
• if you want to work on ad-hoc tasks, you can add them in a separate list which can also be tracked on Sprint or Kanban board.

Unlike other alternatives to Trello and Clickup, Zepel comes with functional reports, lets you add dependencies, has deep integrations with GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Slack, Figma, and more! It comes with a dedicated sprint and board view.

A unique aspect of Zepel is it also allows you to collect customer requests and bug reports from multiple tools (Zendesk, Intercom, Sentry, and more) for easy prioritization.

Key features of Zepel:

Trello Text Formatting

1. Hierarchical view to see all tasks and subtasks in one view.
2. Sprints, Kanban Boards, Scrum Boards, and My Tasks.
3. Track progress of task and feature as a whole.
4. Assignees, due dates, estimation points, tags, comments, and attachments.
5. Markdown description and dependencies
6. Deep integrations with popular tools like Slack, Intercom, InVision, GitHub, and more.

Pricing:

1. Free for up to 5 members without any feature restrictions.
2. From 6th member, pricing starts at $5/member/month.

Try Zepel for free.

2. Asana

Asana is the project and task tracking software that several thousand organizations use. It’s widely popular for having a colourful user interface and providing several views to see your projects.

Asana gives you views such as List, Calendar, Timeline, Inbox, and Board view. The tool also allows you to add sub-tasks, assign, set due dates, and add attachments.

Although the first 15 members are free, Asana’s pricing plan can burn a hole in your pocket when you want more feature. This leads many to look for Asana alternatives.

Key features of Asana:

1. Tasks and subtasks
2. Comments, attachments, description, assignees, and due dates
3. Timeline, List view, Boards, and Calendar
4. Portfolio views
5. Integrations with popular applications like Zapier, time tracking tools, Zepel to send Asana tasks as requests to engineering team, and more.

Pricing:

1. Free for 15 members with limited features.
2. Premium plan costs at $13.49/member/month.
3. Business plan costs at $30.49/member/month.

You might be interested in reading this detailed comparison of Asana vs Trello.

3. Wrike

Wrike, which is also a JIRA alternative, lets you manage work and resources easily.

It comes with Kanban board and Gantt charts that makes it easy for project planning and trying to make sure your team hits those deadlines. Much like any collaboration tool, it also comes with a calendar view that is often preferred by most non-technical teams that use the tool.

Key features of Wrike:

1. File sharing and attachments.
2. Boards, Gantt, and Calendar views.
3. Notification management.
4. File storage space starting from 2 GB to 100 GB.

Trello Markdown Tables

Pricing:

Trello Markdown Code

1. Free for up to 5 members with feature restrictions.
2. Professional plan costs at $9.80/member/month.
3. Business plan costs at $24.80/member/month.

4. Monday

When comparing Clickup vs Trello, Monday is one tool that you might’ve come across. It’s a colourful alternative to the two tool and comes with a pretty simple interface.

Monday.com has most of the features you’d expect in a productivity platform. It includes timeline, column, and board views that allow you to do project planning and tracking easily.

However, a big negative aspect of this tool is pricing plan. It doesn’t have a free plan and it can get pretty expensive.

Key features in Monday:

1. Timeline, calendar, and column views.
2. Private boards and custom task workflows.
3. Visual workload management.
4. Time tracking capabilities.
5. Several integrations including Zapier, GitHub, Hubspot, Zepel to send requests from Monday, and more.

Pricing:

You need to buy a minimum of 3 seats.

1. Basic plan costs $10/seat/month.
2. Standard plan costs $12/seat/month.
3. Pro plan costs $20/seat/month.

Read about the in-depth comparison of Trello vs Monday here.

Concluding the comparison of Clickup vs Trello: Which is better for your team?

So which tool is better when comparing Trello vs Clickup?

Well… if you’re a freelancer or a small marketing agency, Clickup might be the ideal tool for your team. It’s got all the features and is reasonably priced.

Trello Markdown Not Working

If you want a tool for generic purpose that doesn’t require a streamlined process, then Trello would be an ideal tool for you. It would also be ideal for you if you’re a small engineering team.

If you’re an engineering team that is growing and needs more functionality to build software products, you should try Zepel.

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