Boardly and Trello solve the same problem from opposite directions: one is source-available software you can own outright for $19, the other is a subscription at $5/user/mo run entirely on someone else's servers.
Head to head
| Boardly | Trello | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $19 once | $5/user/month (Standard) |
| 10-person team, 3 years | $19 total | $1,800 |
| Boards | Unlimited | Limited on free tier |
| Attachments | Your disk, your limits | 250 MB/file cap, plan-gated |
| Data ownership | SQLite file on your box | Atlassian's cloud |
| Works offline / air-gapped | Yes | No |
| Full JSON export | One click, attachments included | Plan-gated |
| Telemetry | None | Plenty |
What Boardly does well
- 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.
What Trello still does better
There's a real reason Trello costs what it does: a bigger team, broader integrations and dedicated support behind it. If that ecosystem is genuinely what you need, it's worth paying for.
Which one should you pick
If your workflow depends on Trello's specific integrations or you'd rather not run anything yourself, stay put — that's a legitimate call. If you're comfortable owning the tool and want to stop paying $5/user/mo for a job your own hardware can do, Boardly pays for itself and then some: boardly costs less than four months of a single Trello seat — for a team it pays for itself the day you install it.
Try Boardly — $19, once
Self-hosted kanban — drag & drop boards, checklists, labels, attachments, full JSON export.