Trello vs Meistertask: Compare project management software

Task management software should match the complexity of your projects. Trello and MeisterTask both offer flexible task management tools, but which is right for you?

The needs of each department or team at your company are going to dictate how they run their projects, which means companies require flexible task management tools. Trello and MeisterTask provide customizable, kanban-style task management software that can be built out for teams of any size.

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What is Trello?

Trello is a task and project management software that helps teams and individuals organize their projects by moving cards across a kanban-style board. Trello belongs to the Atlassian family of products, all of which are designed to help businesses better manage all types of projects.

What is MeisterTask?

MeisterTask is a task management system built for teams and individuals who run several projects at once. The focus of the tool is a kanban-style task management board, but the software includes many business tools that help teams organize and visualize their work.

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Common features of Trello vs. MeisterTask

While both Trello and MeisterTask have the kanban board as their central project visualization tool, these tools are not equally matched. Trello relies on Power-Ups — integrations with third-party apps and software — for most advanced functions, while these tools are more often built directly into MeisterTask.

Task management

The point of any project management software is to help teams layer individual tasks to build up to large projects — or break large outcomes down to single tasks. Both Trello and MeisterTask have this capability as their core function, but their customization on top of those individual tasks differs.

In Trello, users build a card for each new task. The card contains a title, custom tags to show task type, due dates and a description. By adding subtasks, assigning the card to an owner and adding notes to the card, all of the task’s pertinent information can stay in a single place. Teams can customize their cards to different project or department needs by adding Power-Up integrations that add tools like time tracking or burndown charts. All plans include unlimited storage, but there are size limits per file depending on the plan.

MeisterTask also works on a card-based task management system, where teams can break down full projects into single tasks. MeisterTask includes more built-in features like time tracking, reusable card templates, multiple checklists and drawing relationships between different tasks — functionality that puts MeisterTask closer to a developer ticketing system like Jira than Trello. MeisterTask also has file size limits, and while the free tier doubles Trello’s 10MB limit, it limits uploads to 200MB per file while Trello allows 240MB per file at their lowest paid tier.

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Project collaboration

Today’s collaboration tools take advantage of @mentions, in-app messaging and contextual messaging systems to keep teams working in the tool with as few distracting notifications as possible. Both Trello and MeisterTask use these tools to let collaborators communicate at the task level.

Project views

Understanding the state of work within a single project and across your company can make the difference between on-time and under-budget projects — or the opposite. Both MeisterTask and Trello offer dashboards and reporting tools as well as several different views of work that help teams stay organized.

Where MeisterTask beats out Trello is by giving people a personal view of all of their work across many different projects. Trello’s free and standard plans are designed such that each board is a universe of work unto itself. At the $10/month per user premium level, companies have greater control over the boards they can group together in different dashboards and workspaces. MeisterTask, on the other hand, has filtering tools that surface your own work across different projects and timelines. This can help individual contributors stay focused on their own cards, even in the most hectic of projects.

Choosing Trello vs. MeisterTask

The major differences between Trello vs. MeisterTask relate to how much you need your project management software to do for you.

Trello is a great option for growing teams who are building their project management processes. The software can work as a simple task management tool or as a complex project management software that provides reporting on intricate projects. But Trello isn’t going to offer enterprise-level features out of the box.

The more feature-rich versions of MeisterTask may have too many features for a small team, although the free tool is a good place to get to know the software. However, if your team already runs lots of task-based projects, and you need a central location to monitor, report on and grow your project teams, MeisterTask is a solid bet with all of the necessary built-in features.