Initial release September 13, 2011 Type Productivity software | Operating system Website trello.com | |
Developer(s) Fog Creek Software
Trello Inc. (as of October 2014) | ||
Trello is a web-based project management application originally made by Fog Creek Software in 2011, that was spun out to form the basis of a separate company in 2014 and later sold to Atlassian in January 2017. The company is based in New York City.
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It operates a freemium business model, as well as being cross-subsidized by other Fog Creek Software products. A basic service is provided free of charge, although a Business Class paid-for service was launched in 2013.
History
Trello was released at a TechCrunch event by Fog Creek founder Joel Spolsky. Wired magazine named the application in September 2011 one of "The 7 Coolest Startups You Haven't Heard of Yet". Lifehacker said "it makes project collaboration simple and kind of enjoyable".
In July 2012, the site surpassed 500,000 users; in December 2012 more than 1,000,000; in May 7, 2014, four million; on September 18, 2014, Trello had over five million users and, as of October 14, 2015, it had 10 million users.
In 2014, it raised $10.3 million in funding from Index Ventures and Spark Capital.
In May 2016, Trello claimed it had more than 1.1 million daily active users and 14 million total signups.
On January 9, 2017, Atlassian announced its intent to acquire Trello for $425 million. The transaction was made with $360M in cash, while the remaining $65M was made with shares and options.
Features
Trello uses the kanban paradigm for managing projects, originally popularized by Toyota in the 1980s for supply chain management. Projects are represented by boards, which contain lists (corresponding to task lists). Lists contain cards (corresponding to tasks). Cards are supposed to progress from one list to the next (via drag-and-drop), for instance mirroring the flow of a feature from idea to implementation. Users can be assigned to cards. Users and boards can be grouped into organizations.
It supports iPhone, Android and Windows 8 mobile platforms, however, its website has been designed to be accessible in most mobile web browsers. An iPad application was released on March 12, 2013. It added support for an unlimited number of tags, in the form of colored labels that can be renamed and new ones created, starting November 21, 2014. Cards accept comments, attachments, votes, due dates and checklists. Trello has an API. Users may organize projects through the utilization of boards, lists and cards, which form a bespoke data hierarchy that facilitates effective management of projects, jobs and tasks.
In 2015, Trello launched third-party integrations with tools such as Slack, GitHub and Salesforce for its paying users. In 2016, Trello opened this platform to additional developers with the launch of its "Power-Ups Platform" for developers wanting to integrate their services with Trello.
Uses
Trello has a variety of work and personal uses including real estate management, software project management, school bulletin boards, lesson planning, and law office case management. A rich API as well as email-in capability enables integration with enterprise systems, or with cloud-based integration services like IFTTT and Zapier.
Architecture
According to Fog Creek, the maker of Trello, the website is built on top of MongoDB, Node.js and Backbone.js.