nflo
nflo vs Trello
A Trello alternative for when one board stopped being enough
Trello is the best tool in the world for a single visual pipeline, and nothing here is an argument against that. It gets hard at the point where you have four clients, hours to bill, and no view that spans any of it.
Free while it’s in beta. No credit card, no trial countdown.
What Trello is genuinely better at
Trello’s restraint is a feature, and plenty of people should simply keep using it.
Trello does this well
Reasons to stay put
- Being the simplest thing that works — drag a card, done
- Almost no learning curve, for you or anyone you show it to
- A genuinely generous free tier
- One visual pipeline you can take in at a glance
- Power-Ups when you need one specific extra thing
What nflo does instead
One person, several clients, billable hours
- AI picks your top three tasks each day, with a reason for each
- Timers attached to a client, priced at that client’s hourly rate
- Rates freeze onto each entry, so past time is never repriced
- A weekly or monthly billing period tracked against a target
- A streak, a daily count and monthly points — no badges or levels
Where it stops working across several clients
Trello is flat, and that’s the whole difficulty. A board per client gives you five tidy boards and no way to see across them, so the question “what actually needs doing today” means opening five tabs and holding the answer in your head. One board for everything solves that and immediately becomes a wall you stop looking at.
Priority is card position, which means priority is a judgement you re-make every time you look at the board. Nothing is holding an opinion between visits. Due dates exist, but a card with a date on it sitting fourth in a list is still just a card sitting fourth in a list.
Hours and money live somewhere else entirely — a Power-Up, or the spreadsheet most people end up keeping alongside. That spreadsheet is usually the real sign it’s time to move: the work is in one tool and what the work is worth is in another, and the two only meet when you’re invoicing.
nflo keeps clients, projects, tasks, hours and value in the same place, and answers the daily question directly: three tasks, with a reason for each, rather than a board you have to interpret.
Side by side
Structural differences rather than a feature count — these are the things that don’t change when either product ships an update.
| Trello | nflo | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | One visual pipeline | One person working across several clients |
| Structure | Boards, lists and cards | Clients, then projects, then tasks — with one list across all of them |
| Working across clients | A board each, and no view spanning them | One list, filtered by client, project, status or priority |
| Deciding what to do now | Whatever’s nearest the top of the list | Three tasks picked for you, each with a reason |
| Time tracking | A Power-Up | Built in — a timer per client, or log it by hand |
| Hourly rates | Not a concept a card has | Set per client, frozen onto every entry as you log it |
| Billable targets | Not a concept a board has | Weekly or monthly, tracked against target with pace |
| Recurring work | A repeating card or a Power-Up | Built in — and it rolls over rather than vanishing |
So which one should you use?
Stay on Trello if…
- You have one or two clients and the work fits on a board
- You don’t bill by the hour
- Visual kanban is genuinely how you think, and it’s working
- You want something free with no learning curve at all
Try nflo if…
- You have a board per client and no way to see across them
- You keep a spreadsheet next to Trello for hours or money
- Cards get rewritten and reordered more than they get finished
- You want the tool to decide what’s urgent instead of asking you again
What you give up by moving
nflo isn’t a kanban tool. There’s no drag-and-drop board of columns to move cards between — tasks have a status you set, and the list sorts and filters rather than being arranged by hand. If moving cards across a board is the part that works for you, that’s a real loss.
There are also no Power-Ups, no team boards and no invoicing.
Questions about switching
Does nflo have a kanban board?
No. Tasks live in a filterable, sortable list rather than columns you drag between. That’s deliberate — arranging cards is satisfying and mostly isn’t work — but if kanban is genuinely how you think, Trello is the better tool and you should keep it.
Can I import my Trello boards?
There’s no importer today. Most people re-add only the cards that are genuinely still live, which is usually one sitting and leaves the stale ones behind. Anything you put into nflo comes back out: time as CSV, everything else as a JSON export.
Is nflo free like Trello?
It’s free while it’s in beta, with no credit card and no trial countdown. If paid plans arrive you’ll be told well beforehand, and your data stays exportable either way. Trello’s free tier is a permanent commitment; nflo’s is honest about being a beta.
Trello is a trademark of its owner and has no involvement with nflo. This page compares how the two products are structured rather than auditing them feature by feature, and deliberately avoids quoting prices or plan limits, which change. Check Trello’s own site for what it currently does and costs.
Other comparisons
Try it while it’s free
Sign in, add a client, and see whether being told what to do next suits you better than deciding.
No credit card. Export your data whenever you like.