Trello is a favorite among teams and individuals who love its intuitive interface and easy-to-use kanban boards. But for all its strengths, it’s not always the right fit, especially for those who value self-hosting, open-source values, or simply want more control over their tools.
If you’re exploring project management options that go beyond the usual suspects, this guide walks you through some excellent open-source platforms that echo Trello’s strengths while offering their own unique take on collaboration.
Odoo
Odoo is an open-source platform designed to simplify the complexities of running a business. It integrates every department into one seamless, intuitive system, from sales and accounting to project management and customer relationships. Unlike traditional enterprise solutions that are complex and expensive, Odoo provides a flexible and cost-effective solution that works for businesses of all sizes. Each app within Odoo can operate independently, but the real strength lies in their integration, which streamlines processes and enhances collaboration across your company. Whether you're managing CRM, invoicing, eCommerce, or project planning, Odoo provides powerful tools that help optimize workflows and save time, without the steep learning curve. Its open-source nature ensures flexibility, freedom, and continuous improvement from a vibrant community. With Odoo, you get an all-in-one solution that simplifies your business operations, reduces data silos, and scales as you grow.
Focalboard
Focalboard is an open-source project management tool designed for technical teams, offering an alternative to platforms like Trello, Notion, and Asana. It’s self-hosted, meaning you have full control, and it’s rapidly gaining popularity with over 13,000 stars on GitHub. Focalboard allows teams to centralize, plan, and track work in a way that keeps everything organized, whether you’re shipping a product, planning a campaign, or defining OKRs.
The platform features a clean, intuitive interface that lets you organize tasks in various views, such as Kanban boards, tables, galleries, and calendars. Filters allow you to focus on the most critical tasks, and you can save filtered views for later access. Collaboration is made easy with built-in commenting, team mentions, and customizable board permissions, ensuring communication stays tied to the work.
Focalboard comes with pre-built templates for common use cases, like content calendars and roadmaps, but also allows you to create custom boards suited to your specific needs. Its open-source nature sets it apart from proprietary tools, giving you the flexibility to inspect, modify, or even extend the platform to better fit your team’s workflows. The active community and rich documentation on GitHub and the Mattermost forums provide support for developers and organizations alike.
Whether you’re a startup, a remote team, or an enterprise with specific needs, Focalboard offers the features necessary for maintaining control and boosting productivity, all without the compromises of vendor lock-in.
Teable
With Teable, you don't need a developer to turn your ideas into applications. Whether you're working with spreadsheets or documents, you can create powerful applications in just a few clicks. The intuitive and responsive interface ensures that even non-technical users can start building right away. As teams grow and evolve, real-time collaboration keeps everyone aligned, with granular permissions ensuring flexibility and control over what each team member can see.
Teable also leverages AI to automate repetitive tasks, enhancing productivity and allowing teams to focus on the work that really matters. The platform offers various views like Grid, Form, Kanban, Gallery, and Calendar, so you can visualize your data in the most efficient way for your workflow. Switching between these views is seamless, and each mode comes with tools designed to maximize efficiency.
Built on Postgres, Teable ensures high-performance and scalability, even when handling large datasets. It’s fast and responsive, demonstrated by its ability to handle up to 1 million rows without slowing down. Security is a top priority too, with ISO9001 and ISO27001 certifications and options for private deployments that give you full control over your data.
Teable also integrates easily with your existing systems, unifying your data across multiple platforms. It supports flexible linking and reference features, allowing you to build custom data structures that meet your specific needs, whether for CRM systems or IT operations. By combining the ease of spreadsheets, the power of Postgres, and the intelligence of AI, Teable redefines how teams interact with and manage data, making it simple to build, scale, and optimize the tools that help your business succeed.
OpenProject
OpenProject is a robust, flexible project management solution designed to work with classic, agile, or hybrid project management approaches. It prioritizes security and transparency, ensuring you maintain full control over your data while collaborating effectively with your team. By offering the ability to install the software on-premises or through an Enterprise Cloud solution, OpenProject helps businesses safeguard their data and comply with stringent privacy laws.
One of the platform’s key strengths is its commitment to data security. From HTTPS encryption and two-factor authentication to customizable session runtimes, OpenProject ensures your data remains protected at all times. Additionally, its open-source nature allows for complete transparency, enabling users to study, modify, and distribute the software as needed. This fosters a collaborative community that can quickly identify and address any security vulnerabilities.
OpenProject isn’t just about security—it’s also built to enhance your team’s productivity. Whether you’re using classic project management, agile methods like Scrum and Kanban, or a hybrid approach, OpenProject offers powerful tools for task management, goal clarity, and streamlined workflows. Its agile boards provide clear insights into project progress, helping teams stay on top of deadlines and deliverables. Visual tools help plan activities and manage workloads, ensuring that teams are aligned and working efficiently.
By using OpenProject, you're joining an open-source community that thrives on collaboration and mutual growth. Whether you’re managing projects with a traditional or modern approach, OpenProject offers a reliable, secure, and flexible solution that empowers teams and supports their success.
Kanboard
Kanboard is a minimalist, no-frills Kanban project management tool that focuses on clarity, simplicity, and visual workflow. Designed to get out of your way and help you stay organized, it offers an intuitive interface where tasks move visually across columns, much like sticky notes on a board. The system adapts with your project through customizable workflows, letting you drag and drop tasks as priorities shift.
With built-in work-in-progress limits, Kanboard encourages focus and discourages multitasking, making it easier to stay productive. Its powerful search and filtering system allows you to instantly find what you need using a simple query language. Task management is comprehensive yet streamlined, supporting subtasks, Markdown, attachments, and time tracking without clutter.
Kanboard also saves time by allowing you to automate repetitive actions like changing assignees or updating priorities based on triggers. Fully self-hosted and open source under the MIT license, it offers complete control over your data and is simple to install. Its broad language support and flexible authentication options make it accessible for teams worldwide.
If you're tired of overly complex tools and want a solution that simply works, Kanboard provides a focused, efficient way to manage your projects.
Leantime
Leantime is an open-source project management system designed for non-project managers and especially created with neurodivergent individuals in mind, including those with ADHD, dyslexia, and autism. The platform merges behavioral science, strategy, planning, and execution into an intuitive system that aims to help users stay motivated while managing tasks.
At first glance, Leantime might seem as simple as Trello, but it offers deep features that can rival enterprise tools like Jira and Asana, without overwhelming users. Everything starts from the work dashboard, which acts as a personal command center, helping users organize tasks across projects and time-block their day. With the added help of AI, users can let the platform prioritize their to-dos, making it a powerful tool for personal organization.
Leantime’s design philosophy is focused on reducing cognitive overload by decreasing distractions and helping users set achievable goals that boost motivation. The platform’s AI also assists with breaking down large tasks, generating personalized project descriptions, and even transforming updates into stories told in creative voices.
Unlike traditional task managers, Leantime puts goals at the center of your workflow. By creating tasks that stem from clear goals, users can approach their work with purpose, turning tasks into stepping stones toward larger achievements. The platform also enables users to manage projects with clarity, offering flexible views like Kanban, Table, and List, while also tracking progress through milestones and a high-level Program Plan.
Leantime centralizes project documentation, allowing users to embed content from external tools like Google Docs and Microsoft 365, or create their own within the platform. This makes it easier to keep ideas and progress in one place, ensuring everything stays connected and aligned.
With simplified time tracking and easy-to-understand reports, Leantime also helps users monitor where their time is spent and how their goals are progressing. Whether you're struggling with traditional tools or simply need a more user-friendly platform, Leantime offers a solution that understands the importance of motivation and clarity, making project management more effective and intuitive.
Choosing What’s Right for You
Each of these tools brings a different strength to the table. Taiga feels purpose-built for agile workflows, with features that support iterative progress and team collaboration. Wekan thrives in simplicity, it doesn’t try to be everything but does what it does extremely well. Restyaboard offers a hybrid of ease and power, bridging the gap between intuitive design and richer features. OpenProject, on the other hand, is all about scale and precision, it’s ideal when you need to go deep rather than broad.
When deciding, consider what matters most. Do you want a tool that’s easy to get started with or one that can scale with a growing organization? Are you managing a tech-savvy team that can handle self-hosting, or do you prefer a solution that just works out of the box?
The Open-Source Advantage
What unites all these tools, beyond their functionality, is the spirit of open-source. These platforms are built by communities, not corporations. They give you access to the source code, freedom to customize, and peace of mind knowing you’re not locked into a vendor. You’re free to run them on your own servers, tweak the features, and contribute back if you choose.
It’s not just about saving money, it’s about transparency, security, and ownership. For teams that value autonomy, that’s a powerful proposition.
A Final Thought
If Trello isn’t quite working for you, or you’re simply ready to explore something more aligned with open values, these tools are worth trying. They may not have Trello’s marketing polish, but they offer something deeper: the ability to shape your own workflow on your own terms.
And in today’s digital landscape, that kind of freedom is invaluable.