Boardly vs Trello pricing: $180 vs $49 once

OneTimeSuite Blog · Published 2026-07-21

Trello charges $5 per user per month — a 10-person team pays $600 every year, forever, for lists with cards on them. Boardly is the same kanban workflow on your hardware: unlimited boards, as many people as your server allows, and your data in a single SQLite file you can copy, back up and export any time.

This is the full pricing breakdown: what Trello actually costs over one, two and three years, what Boardly gives you for $49 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.

What Trello actually costs you

Trello prices per user — $5/user/mo — so the subscription grows with every user you add. The comparison below uses the catalog's annual figure of $60; the per-user table underneath shows how the bill scales either way.

Trello bills per user, so the total scales with headcount:

Three years in, the gap is $131 — and every year after that adds another $60 to the subscription side of the ledger.

Boardly vs Trello, feature by feature

Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:

What you get for $49, once

Self-hosted kanban — drag & drop boards, checklists, labels, attachments, full JSON export. The highlights:

• 🗂️ Multiple boards — Color themes, emoji icons, starred favorites — organize work, clients or your whole life.
• ✋ Drag & drop everything — Reorder lists, drag cards between lists — order persists exactly where you dropped it.
• 🃏 Rich cards — Markdown descriptions, due dates with overdue highlighting, colored board-scoped labels.
• ☑️ Checklists — With live progress bars right on the card front.

Boardly costs less than ten months of a single Trello seat — for a team it pays for itself the day you install it.

Switching is 3 steps

1. Buy once on Whop. One-time $49 — one of the cheapest apps in the suite. Installer, updates and setup support included.
2. Run it anywhere. Desktop app for personal boards, or docker compose up -d on a $5 VPS for the whole team.
3. Move your boards in. Create lists, drag cards, attach files, tick checklists. Export everything to JSON whenever you want proof you own it.

When paying Trello is still the right call

Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that Trello's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying $5/user/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.

If that's you, Boardly is $49, once. For the deeper dive, read the Boardly vs Trello head-to-head or the full Trello comparison.

Frequently asked questions

Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/boardly-kanban-mvp, always. $49 buys the packaged installer, updates and setup support.

How do team members log in?
One shared password protects the whole install — there are no per-user accounts, permissions or assignee fields yet. That's fine for small teams on a trusted server or VPN; if you need granular roles and member management, Trello still wins there.

Does it have automations like Butler?
No — no rule engine, no scheduled commands. Boardly bets that most Trello boards never touch Butler, and most don't. If yours does, keep Trello.

Is there a mobile app?
No native app — the web UI works in a phone browser when you host it on a VPS. Desktop mode is Windows-first, and the MIT source builds anywhere Electron runs.

Can I get my data out?
Completely — one click exports a full-fidelity JSON file including attachment bytes, and importing it on another install reproduces your boards exactly. Try asking Trello's free tier for that.

More on Trello pricing

Boardly — product page, demo & full feature list · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns