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The market for project management tools is rapidly growing due to the increasing adoption of agile frameworks and remote work practices. It is expected to reach $9.81 billion by 2028.
Although both of these popular project management tools, Jira and Trello, are owned by the same company, Atlassian, they offer a different feature set to business owners and project managers. Let’s dive into the details.
Trello vs. Jira
PMT software generally offers features such as task management, task tracking, team collaboration, progress reporting, etc. We would now compare the features, target audience, and pricing of both Trello and Jira to highlight the unique characteristics of each project management tool.
Features
Trello has the following features:
- It is a visual-based tool with cards, boards, and lists to organize and prioritize tasks. A board represents a project, a list is a stage in the project’s workflow, and cards are various tasks under a project stage.
- Users can include descriptions, due dates, checklists, etc., on a card. They can further add labels to categorize and prioritize tasks.
- Trello offers multiple collaborative features, for example, users can share boards with other team members, assign tasks, leave comments on cards, etc.
- It offers easy integration into existing workflows via Google Drive, Slack, Jira, etc.
- Trello offers a mobile app for Android and iOS for easy access to boards from anywhere.
Jira offers the following features:
- This PMT allows users to create projects for task management. Each project can have multiple boards and workflows.
- Jira uses ‘tickets’ to track issues, bugs, tasks, and user stories. Project managers assign tickets to team members and track progress.
- Jira allows a project team to follow the agile methodologies of Scrum and Kanban via agile boards. An agile board displays tasks as cards, and users can mark their progress by moving cards across columns.
- Jira supports custom workflows. A project workflow consists of multiple steps that an issue must go through to be resolved. Project teams can alter these workflows according to their project requirements.
- Jira offers an extensive reporting feature that helps teams track progress, identify roadblocks and gain insights into the overall workflow.
- It integrates with several tools, such as GitHub, Confluence, etc., to easily incorporate into existing workflows.
- It offers Android and iOS apps for remote project management.
Target Audience
As the features indicate, Trello is a more user-friendly option for individuals and small teams. Its simple and easy-to-use features make it a suitable choice for project management among non-technical users.
Its Kanban-centric approach to task management through boards and cards offers flexibility to teams with changing requirements and priorities. There is no fixed workflow to follow.
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Users can add tasks and prioritize them as needed. Freelancers and smaller organizations can benefit from such a flexible yet straightforward project management tool.
Jira’s features show it as the best project management software choice for technical and software development teams.
Software developers usually follow a scrum approach where a development project is divided into multiple tasks called sprints. Jira tool assists with sprint planning and creating workflows.
Jira is also a popular choice among software developers for its easy integration with other essential development tools like BitBucket.
Jira is an excellent PMT choice for technical teams working on complex projects with customized workflows.
Pricing
Both project management tools offer various pricing plans to cater to users with different requirements and budgets.
Trello offers a free plan with features including unlimited boards, cards, and users.
It also offers three paid plans: Business Class, Enterprise, and a customizable plan for large organizations.
The business plan comes with additional features such as customizable backgrounds, advanced checklists, etc.
Enterprise plan offers advanced security features, user provisioning, and custom branding. The business plan costs $9.99 a month, and the price for an enterprise plan is based on users’ requirements.
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Jira also offers a freemium model, but its free plan is for up to 10 users. The paid plans include Standard, Premium, and Enterprise.
The standard plan is $7 per user per month and offers agile boards where users can create custom workflows, etc.
The Premium plan is $14 per user per month and offers additional features such as automation, 24/7 customer support, etc.
The enterprise plan is customized for large organizations and comes with more advanced features such as unlimited storage, advanced security, etc.
Trello is more affordable for small businesses and individuals, whereas Jira offers expensive pricing plans for software development teams and larger enterprises.
Trello vs. Jira Which Should you Choose for your Business?
Trello is a user-friendly basic project management tool with customizable kanban boards that offer visual insights into the project tasks and progress.
Collaborative features like card sharing, push notifications, etc., help small teams stay on one page when working on a project. The pricing plans are also pocket-friendly.
However, software development teams or larger organizations with complex agile workflows would find Trello’s simplicity limiting.
Jira, on the other hand, offers features like sprint planning, backlogs, project reporting, issue tracking, bug tracking, etc., to undertake an agile development approach such as Scrum effectively. Teams can build custom workflows to design, build, test, and release software.
Small teams or individuals would find Jira an overwhelming PMT option to manage simple projects. Moreover, smaller teams that want access to enterprise-level project management features might consider high pricing a disadvantage.
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Medium to large enterprises with technical teams following agile methodologies would find advanced agile-based Jira favorable for project management.
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Many agile software development teams use Trello with Jira to manage individual issues. Managers can convert project issues into Trello cards and to different team members and track progress.
Jira offers more complex and user-tier-based pricing plans based on the number of users. However, advanced agile-based features explain the higher prices.
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FAQs on Jira vs. Trello
No, Jira is an agile project management tool that offers extensive features to implement scrum or kanban methodologies for software development projects. It is a better project management tool for technical users. Trello is a lightweight project management tool for tasks like marketing campaigns, editorial calendar planning, etc. It only offers kanban boards for easy and quick task management.
Trello makes task assignment and project tracking easier when used with Jira in large teams. Jira users can link Issues or tickets in Jira to cards in Trello and assign cards to different team members. In this way, everyone can see who is working on what task.
Trello, a task management tool, suits everyone from individuals and small teams of 3 to 10 members to businesses with 250 plus employees. It offers easy-to-use features that help manage multiple tasks with variable priorities efficiently. Technical teams, such as software developers, might find it lacking in elaborate software project management requiring agile-centric features.
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