How Much for a Trello-like Web App? The Shocking Cost Breakdown Revealed!


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Unveiling the True Cost of Trello-like App

This application or tool was established with a concept of digital whiteboard along with notecards. This is an extremely useful application as it enables teams to keep track of projects, communication progress and sharing of data. Every year, organizations, on demand solutions, and startups all over the world look for new projects for the management of software. The majority of them consider Trello-like software to be the best. As Trello has been bought by Australian Atlassian, other competitors are looking for the same kind of application that can help them in numerous ways.

If any developer wishes to create such a clone-app like Trello, there are many factors to be considered. These include the creation of a web app with similar features and the cost regarding building it and put it in the market for use. Also, a deep knowledge of Trello is required so that an attempt of similar or better applications.


Potential customers for Trello

Potential customers for Trello

Trello is best-suited for small to medium-sized businesses and also some of the large enterprises as it is a web-based visual collaboration tool. This tool has been integrated with a huge number of users in various businesses, on-demand solutions, and industries. The main customers of these applications are organizations related to software development, marketing, and advertising, consumer goods as well as higher education. There are some most prominent customers for Trello such as Anytime Fitness, Tumblr, The New York Times, Trip Advisor, Adobe and Scout books. In addition to task management, Trello offers a huge number of example use cases to show how to use this tool effectively. There are many significant use cases present such as Vacation planning, Healthy meal planning, conference planning, organizing blog post ideas, development boards and so on.

Trello covers countries like United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and others. It offers a version with the basic functionality of individual users. But it is well-known that this app is widely used by companies of varying sizes. That is why it offers paid versions of the app. This includes a three-tier structure including Trello Gold, Trello Business Class, and Trello Enterprise. These versions offer different facilities depending upon the prices. This app is best suited to on-demand app development as it provides customized tools and functionalities for work.


Features of Trello

Features of Trello

Before developing an app like Trello, it is important to have the knowledge of its prime features so that it can be inculcated into the clone app. The most popular thing about this app is its interface and design. The app is designed to facilitate a Kanban-style workflow. There are other features associated with this app. These are as follows:


1. Boards

A Trello board is basically a list of lists consisting of cards. Each board shows one project or product which is still in the development phase. Other than this, it can also describe anything that requires planning or strategy. Every Trello board is connected with some particular members who have access to the board. These authorized members can see it, control other functions as the creation and flow of the cards between board lists. It also enables the members to invite other members to the board. The number of team members added and invited to a particular board is unlimited. Also, the access of the board can be changed to public or private as per preference. Sidebar consists of all settings and controls for boards. It also resides in the members' panel as well as the board activity feed.

The settings also allow removing members from a board, changing the board background as on or off, allowing and forbidding comments, adding and deletion of extensions and facility of adding other members to the board. Mobile app development company make use of this feature to strategies the phases of development of the app. The searching is easy with the help of filters that can be applicable to the cards by member name, due date, date of creation, labels as well as keywords. There is an option for a quick search. This option lets the users search all card content and present it in a simple interface with an all-new set of operators. This helps in narrowing down the searches.

Some popular operators are @name, due: day, the board: id and created: day. These operators are also able to perform their functions in the Archive search bar of the application. Other display options are available such as changing colors and managing the labels specific to a particular board. The development of UI and UX for Trello boards can take as much as 80 to 96 hours. In order to implement the actual functionality, that normally consists of coding in HTML/CSS along with the front end as well as backend development of the web app, the time taken may exceed 320-342 hours. The developer team is solely responsible along with the resources and other factors for the development time of each board.


2. Lists

Trello gives the facility of creating lists inside the boards. Lists act as a simple way to divide a board into several categories. Each category provides information about a particular stage of the process. This may include tasks that are in progress, works to be done, etc. Writers have their own style of working in Trello regarding articles. It may include stages of the article such as 'Plan is ready', 'Plan is ready to be reviewed', 'Copyediting ready' and 'Done'. The users can add status as per their preferences and work choices. On demand app development companies use the lists to create a customizable interface for building own task without any kind of hindrance.

As far as the creation of UI or UX for such lists is concerned, the time taken may vary from 40 to 48 hours. The front end programming, back end programming, as well as the HTML/CSS coding and other aspects of web development, can take from 96-104 hours in time. This factor may vary according to the number of people working on it, efficiency of the team, resources provided to the team as well as the capital investment is done in the whole process by the company.


3. Cards

As mentioned above, Trello has lists and those lists can be filled with as many cards people want. Cards are like tasks, users can create cards of the tasks to be done. For example, take this article as a card, the card is given a title, for instance, this card(Article) is named "how much….", now after that, all the things written below the card is the description of the card. There can also be files that are attached to the card like images and videos. Tags can also be added to the cards to categorize them. The users can also leave comments on the cards to remember or to point out specific points in the card. There are some tasks/cards that users share with someone, and for this, there is an option for tagging the other person in the cards. There is an option through which every person who has access to a specific card can see the activities done.

Activities like the creation of the card, details added to the card and with whom it is shared can be known. Trello is an app that works in real-time sharing, the users can immediately get notifications through their email. Users will get a notification whenever someone tags them in a card, shares something to a card, adds something or even when they change something in it. All the activities done are shown on the screen and that is why the users can always keep the tab open and it will work even if they don't refresh it. To view the notifications on Trello users can find a red bell-shaped button on the top right corner of the web page. The button is not always red, only when the users have a notification, it turns red.

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Cards should be deleted regularly, it is important so that the users don't get confused among so many cards. It is better to delete the card after the task that it represents gets done. There are situations when users delete cards by accident, for this Trello has an archive feature and the cards can be retrieved even if they get deleted. This is the feature that is very important for all applications like this. Even if the users delete the cards intentionally, there may be a point where they might want to know something about it. Archive features store all the information about all the cards.


3. Teams

There may be a huge number of boards and members in Trello. One can create business teams to keep each and every employee connected with the organization. For instance, a company may have a huge list of various boards such as content development, CEO, Marketing and many more. As a member of any team, one can see all of the boards of the other teams. Also, authorized persons can change the visibility of the team from private to public. Also connecting the Trello team to a slack team is possible. The members of the team can be moved to a higher level with the help of Trello Business Class.

For the implementation of this module, the estimated time is from 40 to 48 hours for designing UI/UX designing. For web development including front end and back end programming, it takes around 96 to 104 hours for the process of development.


Choice of the technology stack

Choice of the technology stack

The next step is to implement a suitable technology stack that will prove to be a good choice for MVP as well as a fully developed product. As far as programming languages are concerned, Ruby, JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3. The application framework used can be Ruby on Rails. The framework for JavaScript can be React.js. The reason behind it is that React.js is extremely easy to use and implement. React Native app development company is currently in demand for similar apps.

Another option of implementing React.js is to hire an expert for react native development. React is the best framework to utilize the capabilities of javascript. Another need of the app is its automation frameworks. Frameworks like RSpec, Capybara, PhantomJS and more. PostgreSQL can be used for SQL data storage. Redis can be used as key-value storage in the app. The web server is an inseparable part of every web app. For this purpose, Nginx may be used. Puma can be used as a web application server. After the development phase, the hosting of the app can be done in Amazon Web Services (AWS).

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The web apps that are created with Ruby on Rails and its satellite tools are reliable. The reason behind this is its scalable framework, efficient performance, and security. There are many services that swap out a lot of tools for extensive tasks that have reached a huge amount of daily and monthly users. Ruby on Rails frameworks maintains all these work at their core. These are the features that Trello offers without taking any amount. But how does Trello make money if it offers all these services for free? For business purposes, there are various business models offered by this application for small to medium and even for large enterprises and businesses.


Business Model of Trello

Business Model of Trello

This web application follows a freemium business model. Freemium means, free and premium both. In a freemium model, Trello offers its services and features (Basic) for free to everyone and all its advanced services and features can be used by the people who subscribe to the premium version. There are three types of premium memberships offered by Trello, Trello Gold, Trello Business Class, and Tello Enterprise. All of these are more or less similar to the basic Trello but all of these offer some additional features to their users.

Providing Premium memberships for additional features can recover Mobile App Development Cost.


Below is a description of all the types of premium offered by Trello

Below is a description of all the types of premium offered by Trello

1. Trello Gold

Most of the features offered by Trello gold are similar to the basic Trello. There are some additional features that increase the fun and productivity of the web application. Along with fun add-ons, users can find over 800 emojis and many stickers and some cool backgrounds with the Gold membership. The users can also upload their own backgrounds and stickers to the web application.

With providing better performance and fun stickers there are three power-ups (integrations with external applications) per board, attachment limit of 250MB and search save options. Users are charged $5 per month and $45 per user per year for these additional features. Users can also play smart and get Trello Gold for free, they just have to refer Trello to their friends.


2. Trello Business Class

Just like the name suggests, this is specifically designed for people who want to use Trello for their business. With Trello business, more than 100 people can use one Trello account. This multi-user based membership focuses on collaboration, sharing of information more securely, and communication. The user who owns the account becomes the admin and can control both private and public boards. The admin can restrict people outside their team and create outside observers, the admin can decide who is allowed to edit the boards and who can just see it.With this membership the user gets priority email support (in just one business day), unlimited power-ups for all boards, and the boards can also be added in groups, this feature is called Board Collections. They can also add members to Tello via their Google Accounts, they can also deactivate members without losing their data. They can also export their data in JSON or CSV format just with a click. Users need to pay $12.50 per team member per month or $199.99 per team per year for this membership. All the members of the team will be upgraded with this plan, it is not possible to exclude any team member.


3. Trello Enterprise

This is just like Trello Business Class with some additional features for security. This plan is very much suitable for enterprise teams. This plan gives the users advanced security features with 2FA (Two Factor Authentication). Whenever a team member signs in via a new device they have to go through the two-factor authentication to again log in. This feature increases the security of the whole team. Along with this, this plan provides priority phone support in business hours, an account manager and a single unified bill for all the members of the enterprise team. To know the cost of this plan, users have to request a quote.


Cost to build such an app

Cost to build such an app

The cost depends on estimated hours, technology stack used and well as the total cost for design and implementation of basic Trello functionality. It may include both backend and frontend solutions. The time taken may vary from 1152 to 1278 hours. Also, the mobile app development cost can go from $34,560 to $191,700 depending upon the above-mentioned factors.