Trello
AcquiredNew York, US Β· Founded 2002 Β· 2 known investors
Trello is a work organization and project management tool that uses Inbox, Boards, and Planner to help users track to-dos, ideas, and tasks, with integrations, automation, and task mirroring across locations. It is offered by Atlassian and used by organizations to manage collaborative work.
Also known as Trello, Inc.
Founders & leadership
Investors Β· 2
Reported raises Β· per SEC filings
Form D private placements$10.3M disclosed across 1 round Β· 2014
βΆ$10.3MraisedJul 2014 Β· 16 investors Β· Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Michael Howard PryorExecutive Officer, Director
- Avram Joel SpolskyExecutive Officer, Director
- Bijan SabetDirector
- Offering amount
- $10.3M
- Amount sold
- $10.3M
- First sale
- Jul 2014
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware, 2014
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Trello is a web-based, kanban-style list-making and project management application developed by Atlassian. Users create boards containing columns (lists) of cards representing tasks, and move cards between columns that typically represent statuses such as To Do, In Progress and Done. Cards hold due dates and start dates, attachments, labels, checklists, custom fields, covers and comments. The product is positioned for both personal and business use, with documented applications including real estate management, software project management, school bulletin boards, lesson planning, accounting, web design, gaming and law office case management.
The current product centers on three surfaces described on Trello's site: Inbox, for capturing to-dos and messages from email, Slack and Microsoft Teams into a personal space; Boards, for organizing work; and Planner, a calendar view where cards can be dragged onto available time blocks and synchronized with external events. AI features support drafting and editing card content, summarization, generating checklists and images, adding due dates, merging cards, scheduling focus blocks, and generating complete boards from a described goal. Built-in no-code automation lets users define rules and commands for board actions, and card mirroring keeps a single card synchronized across multiple boards.
Trello is available as a web application and on macOS, Windows, iOS 12+ and Android 5.1+, and is supported in Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari. It is offered in 21 languages. Administration features include real-time user management, content permissions, board and Workspace visibility controls, two-factor authentication, mobile device management, domain-restricted invites, observers, SSO via Atlassian Guard, and Enterprise-level dashboards, licensing and data restrictions.
Founding story
Trello was created in 2011 inside Fog Creek Software by original authors Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor. It was announced publicly by Spolsky on 13 September 2011 at a TechCrunch event and on his Joel on Software blog. The product's name comes from "trellis," the code name used in its early stages. Trello was later spun out of Fog Creek in 2014 to form a standalone company headquartered in New York City.
Business model
Trello operates a software-as-a-service subscription model with a freemium entry point. The Free plan supports up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, up to 10 boards per Workspace, unlimited cards and Power-Ups, 10MB file uploads and 250 Workspace command runs per month. Paid tiers add capability: Standard ($5/user/month billed annually, $6 monthly) adds AI features, unlimited boards, card mirroring, Custom Fields and 1,000 command runs; Premium ($10/user/month annually, $12.50 monthly) adds Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard and Map views, Workspace views, admin and security controls, unlimited command runs and data export; Enterprise ($17.50/user/month billed annually, $210 per user per year) adds unlimited Workspaces, organization-wide permissions, Power-Up administration, multi-board guests, Atlassian Guard-based SSO and user provisioning, and 24/7 enterprise admin support. Some partner Power-Ups require additional subscription fees, and Atlassian Guard is a separate subscription starting at $4/user/month.
Revenue comes from per-user subscription fees across the Standard, Premium and Enterprise tiers, billed monthly or annually, with a free tier used for acquisition. Enterprise is billed annually at $210 per user per year and bundles Atlassian Guard Standard. Additional revenue-adjacent charges exist for some partner Power-Ups and for Atlassian Guard subscriptions. A third-party directory publishes estimated revenue and valuation figures for Trello, but labels them as model-based estimates derived from comparable companies rather than reported financials.
Traction
Reported adoption figures include more than 1.1 million daily active users and 14 million total signups in May 2016, 35 million users in March 2019 and 50 million users in October 2019. The Power-Up directory listed 247 extensions by January 2022, and the company currently advertises 200+ integrations. Company-cited TechValidate survey results state that 75% of organizations report value within 30 days, 81% of customers chose Trello for ease of use, and 74% say Trello improved communication with co-workers and teams. A third-party directory lists approximately 21,149 people on record and a domain rating of 91.
Latest developments
Recent product emphasis is on AI and the Inbox/Boards/Planner model: AI-assisted quick capture of to-dos from email, Slack and Microsoft Teams; AI summarization and content generation on cards; AI organization features that generate checklists and images, add due dates, merge cards and schedule focus blocks; and AI-generated boards created from a described goal. Trello also supports viewing and managing Jira work items inside Trello lists via Jira Lists. In January 2024, Trello data containing over 15 million unique email addresses, names and usernames was posted to a hacking forum and subsequently added to Have I Been Pwned.
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Trello is an established, widely used product in the project management and team collaboration software category, described by Wikipedia as a kanban-style list-making application and by a third-party directory as a visual collaboration tool in project management, collaboration software, productivity tools, workflow automation and team management. It reported 50 million users as of October 2019, states it is used by millions of users globally, and has been part of Atlassian since 2017, sitting alongside Jira with cross-product syncing.
Sources emphasize ease of use and flexibility as the product's principal distinguishing attributes: a Trello TechValidate survey cited on the company site reports that 81% of customers chose Trello for its ease of use, and PC Magazine's January 2017 review rated it 3.5/5, calling it "flexible" and noting "you can get rather creative," while cautioning that "it may require some experimentation to figure out how to best use it for your team and the workload you manage." Other differentiators claimed in company materials include the Power-Ups extension ecosystem (247 Power-Ups listed by January 2022; 200+ integrations advertised currently), built-in no-code automation on every board, card mirroring across boards, AI-generated boards and checklists, and stated 99.99% year-over-year uptime with compliance certifications. Within the Atlassian portfolio, Jira Lists allow Jira work to be synced and managed inside Trello.
Technology
Trello is delivered as a web application with desktop clients for macOS and Windows and mobile apps for iOS 12+ and Android 5.1+, and is supported in current versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari. According to a January 2012 Fog Creek blog post cited by Wikipedia, the client was a thin web layer downloading a main application written in CoffeeScript compiled to minified JavaScript, using Backbone.js, HTML5 pushState() and the Mustache templating language, with a server built on MongoDB, Node.js and a modified version of Socket.io. The current product includes a Power-Ups extension platform for third-party developers, a built-in no-code automation engine (command runs), card mirroring, and AI capabilities for content generation, summarization, board generation and organization. The software is proprietary.
Go-to-market
Trello uses a self-serve, freemium acquisition motion: visitors sign up free from the website, with a 14-day free trial of Premium promoted for users seeking AI and unlimited automation, and paid plans purchased per user. Distribution spans web, desktop apps for macOS and Windows, and iOS and Android mobile apps. Integrations with widely used workplace tools (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Gmail, Confluence, Google Drive, Salesforce, Jira and 200+ others) and a community template gallery serve as adoption channels, while Enterprise buyers are addressed through admin dashboards, centralized billing, SSO/user provisioning via Atlassian Guard and dedicated 24/7 enterprise admin support. Customer stories from organizations such as Women Who Code, ThoughtWorks and IKEA/PTC, plus TechValidate survey statistics, are used as social proof on the site.
Trello targets both individual users managing personal to-dos and goals and teams within organizations, including marketing, product management, engineering, design, startups and remote teams. Plan structure indicates coverage from individuals and small groups (Free, up to 10 collaborators per Workspace) through mid-sized teams (Standard, Premium) to large organizations requiring organization-wide permissions, SSO and Power-Up administration (Enterprise). Referenced customers include Women Who Code, ThoughtWorks and IKEA/PTC. Documented use cases span real estate management, software project management, education, accounting, web design, gaming and legal case management.
Geography
Trello is headquartered in New York, United States, and was spun out as a separate company in New York City. It serves users globally, with product interfaces available in 21 languages including Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Its first localized international expansion, in May 2015, targeted Brazil, Germany and Spain.
History
Trello was created in 2011 by Fog Creek Software and released on 13 September 2011, announced by Fog Creek founder Joel Spolsky at a TechCrunch event; the name derives from "trellis," an early code name for the project. In 2014 the product was spun out into a separate company based in New York City, raising $10.3 million from Index Ventures and Spark Capital. Trello reported more than 1.1 million daily active users and 14 million signups by May 2016, expanded internationally with localized interfaces for Brazil, Germany and Spain in May 2015, and launched its Power-Ups developer platform in 2016 with initial integrations including Zendesk, SurveyMonkey and Giphy. On 9 January 2017 Atlassian announced it would acquire Trello for $425 million ($360 million cash plus $65 million in shares and options); before the deal Trello had sold 22% of its shares to investors, with the rest held by founders Michael Pryor and Joel Spolsky. Trello itself acquired Butler, the developer of a task-automation Power-Up, in December 2018, and announced 35 million users in March 2019 and 50 million in October 2019.
Risks & controversies
Two security and privacy issues are documented. In 2020, Craig Jones, then cybersecurity operations director at Sophos, reported that personally identifiable information of Trello users was exposed through publicly visible Trello boards, an issue he had first raised publicly in 2018. On 16 January 2024, Trello suffered a data breach in which data covering more than 15 million unique email addresses, names and usernames was posted on a hacking forum; the data had been obtained by enumerating a publicly accessible resource using email addresses drawn from prior breach corpuses, and was added to Have I Been Pwned on 22 January 2024. Separately, third-party directory data on Trello contains internal inconsistencies (for example, a founding year of 2010 versus a 2011 creation date in Wikipedia, and estimated revenue and valuation figures flagged as low-confidence model outputs), so such figures should be treated cautiously.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources β announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed β not independently audited.
Timeline Β· 9
launches, deals, and filingsData containing over 15 million unique email addresses, names and usernames was posted on a hacking forum; it was obtained by enumerating a publicly accessible resource using email addresses from previous breach corpuses, and was added to Have I Been Pwned on 22 January 2024.
Craig Jones, then cybersecurity operations director at Sophos, found that personally identifiable information of users was exposed through public Trello boards; the issue was first tweeted about in 2018.
Trello announced the acquisition of Butler, a company that developed a power-up for automating tasks within a Trello board.
Atlassian announced its intent to acquire Trello for $425 million, structured as $360 million in cash and $65 million in shares and options. Prior to the acquisition, Trello had sold 22% of its shares to investors, with remaining shares held by founders Michael Pryor and Joel Spolsky.
$425M source β
Trello launched the Power-Up platform allowing third-party developers to build and distribute extensions; initial integrations included Zendesk, SurveyMonkey and Giphy.
Trello expanded internationally with localized interfaces for Brazil, Germany, and Spain.
Trello was spun out to form the basis of a separate company based in New York City in 2014.
In September 2011, Wired magazine included Trello in its list of 'The 7 Coolest Startups You Haven't Heard of Yet'.
Trello was created in 2011 by Fog Creek Software and released publicly on 13 September 2011, announced at a TechCrunch event.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
βΈResearch sources Β· 8
primary sources listed
- Trellotrello.com Β· web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Trello do?
- Trello is a kanban-style task and project management app created at Fog Creek in 2011 and acquired by Atlassian in 2017.
- Who are Trello's investors?
- Trello's investors include LAUNCH, Spark Capital.
- How much funding has Trello raised?
- Trello has disclosed $10.3M raised across 1 round.
- Where is Trello headquartered?
- Trello is headquartered in New York, US.