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Trello celebrates One Million Users
- dodger 14y ago. . . and is still super, super fun to work on.
- swah 14y agoI could never adapt. I didn't like the way one deals with older items. Care to tell us how you use it?
- newobj 14y agoI think he is saying he's a Trello developer.
- dodger 14y agoYes, I was trying to say that developing Trello is still really fun, even as it's getting bigger - we are starting to see some minor scaling challenges, but it's still a great time. But we do use Trello to manage Trello, with a public dev board (https://trello.com/dev https://trello.com/dev) and also internal boards to track things that are not yet public or that are too granular to expose externally. Uservoice has a neat and somewhat complex setup: http://www.uservoice.com/blog/founders/trello-google-docs-product-management/ http://www.uservoice.com/blog/founders/trello-google-docs-pr... And there are a bunch of good articles about how people are using Trello; searching for 'How I use Trello' turns up a lot of ideas. That being said, it's not going to fit everybody every time.
- jcastro 14y agoWould love to see what kind of dev platform/technology you use to build trello, specifically the scaling challenges.
- kevingessner 14y agoThe team wrote a blog post describing their tech stack last year: http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-trello-tech-stack/ http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-trello-tech-stack/ The biggest change since then is that Trello now runs on AWS, rather than colocated servers in NYC. But the software is the same.
- dodger 14y ago. . . and here's an example of an issue with scaling it up: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13770826/poorly-balanced-socket-accepts-with-linux-3-2-kernel-vs-2-6-kernel http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13770826/poorly-balanced-...
- tedunangst 14y agoShared file descriptors are bad mojo.
- Nowyouknow 14y agoTook a look at the dev board as a way to "demo" the service without signing up. It seems... overly complicated? Maybe I really do just need to sign up.
- swah 14y agoSorry for the confusion - did I meantion I found Trello greatly executed? :)
- pgrote 14y agoGreat service. I hope they start charging for the service soon.
- xxpor 14y agoFrom your perspective, why? AFAIK, it's not like it's a social network where you get an increase in value with the filtering charging brings.
- c1u 14y agoI love Trello, but cannot commit to using it more for business until I have an expectation of service, which comes from paying for it. They're awesome, but they owe me nothing, and that's just too risky.
- xxpor 14y agoThat makes sense.
- qznc 14y agoThis argument sounds reasonable. I wonder if it is true though. Businesses that are paid for their services can vanish as well. The question is, if the probability is really lower for paid services compared to free services.
- gecko 14y agoYou know, I've had a fair number of services that I'm paying for just vanish out from under me, too (e.g., eWorld, iTools, Grove.io, the original Siri). Sometimes the wind-down is longer, sometime it isn't. And, conversely, some things I don't pay for have been around for a very, very long time (Freenode, Gmail, my old Fidonet BBS, etc.). Maybe paid sticks around longer on average, but I think paid-v.-free is a bad litmus test. I think there's a much better one: how easy it is to take your data and go home. With Trello, the answer is "exceedingly easy." On any board, just go to "Options" -> "Share, Print, Export..." and dump the entire board to JSON. From there, it should be easy to move your data onto Remember the Milk, Pinterest, org-mode, or whatever's appropriate for you. You can even automate grabbing that JSON on a daily basis via the API, if you're so inclined. So while I understand your argument, your actual risk here is very, very low. As another Creeker pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the Trello team has some stuff coming out in the future that you may find appealing, if you would feel better contractually paying for stuff. But in terms of risk, I think that it can be very low, today, whether you pay or not.
- citricsquid 14y agoThese sort of product celebrations (with users providing feedback on what the product means to them) are fantastic. As a user it's great to be able to see what a product means to others too and how they're using it. We had a similar page for a website we run and reading user feedback is so much fun, companies should do this sort of thing more often. Trello only reached 500,000 users in July of this year, that's some spectacular growth: http://blog.trello.com/trello-is-now-500000-strong/ http://blog.trello.com/trello-is-now-500000-strong/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- michaelkscott 14y agoI think you mean, July of last year.
- tesmar2 14y agoGreat Service. Recently, however, we moved to basecamp because of the calendaring features.
- gecko 14y agoOne thing I think people don't appreciate is that Trello isn't really competing with Basecamp/Jira/FogBugz. Those tools are all really well designed for fine-grained project development. Trello is beautifully designed for a much higher-level view of a project. It would be entirely sane to keep track of the general status of your project, while still keeping track of its minutia in something like Basecamp. That's exactly what the Kiln team does: a single card may stand in for all of Kiln HyperSync, even though dozens of FogBugz cases, with due dates and escalation states, may sit behind it. This isn't a failing of either tool; just an acknowledgment they fit into different niches.
- galephico 14y agoJoel himselft talked about the difference between vertical and horizontal products, applied to Trello : http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html
- precisioncoder 14y agoThat's the post that convinced me to sign up for Trello! I was looking for it to post it, heh. I've been using it for... I guess about 6 months or so... maybe longer, in any case I seem to have the Blue Starfish of being in the first 500 000 users.
- egomaksab 14y agoIf you need more vertical stuff then check out Breeze (http://letsbreeze.com http://letsbreeze.com), it's Basecamp and Trello mashup. Plus it adds calendar, time tracking, budgeting and reporting.
- solhershkowitz 14y ago
- bane 14y agoHa! It's funny since I literally just finally signed up this past week. I saw it when it first came out and was blown away but didn't have time to fit it into my routine until recently. Really wonderful elegant software, I've gotten a few other people to convert to it too just in the past couple days. I have boards for misc tasks, various engineering tasks, shopping, development, sales pipelines etc. It's fantastic.
- james-singh 14y agoCongrats to Trello! It's one service/solution I love dearly.
- warrentr 14y agoThey don't check for uniqueness of email address when registering via google, so perhaps this claim is dubious :)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- onetwothreefour 14y agoAll user number claims from anyone are dubious. Just compare them all with a grain of salt. :)
- JPKab 14y agoI have, in the past 3 months, been forced to work in a location where the only internet access is on machines with IE8 on them (and no ability to install Chrome Frame). The loss of Trello has absolutely FUCKING sucked. I'm sorry for the profanity, but it is an abysmally awful process to have to STOP using Trello and go back to emailing spreadsheets back and forth or shudder MS Project. I think this huge drop in my productivity is a testament to just how awesome Trello is.
- MartinCron 14y agoHave you considered the Trello apps for smartphones and tablets as an alternative?
- ebun 14y agoThe iOS app still requires an internet connection to sync anything.
- CodeCube 14y agoWell yeah, but if you've got an iPhone, chances are you have a cell connection. If he can't access the internet, even over the cell network, I'd be curious to know what kind of environment he's working in.
- nlavezzo 14y agoIE8 only, no internet / cell access at work... I'm from the DC area and all of my friends that have these issues work for "the government".
- MartinCron 14y agoI really look forward to a time where "the government" doesn't mean IE8 only. I've been bit by this myself, at the state level.
- joelthelion 14y agoHow many active ones?
- gecko 14y agoI don't feel comfortable providing that number, but I can talk a bit about how the Trello team would answer it. The concept of "active" isn't really a cut-and-dried thing. Do you count people who merely look at Trello, or do they have to do something? If they have to do something, then what is "something"? If I do one "something," is that enough, or do I have to do a couple? What if someone does that on my behalf (i.e., assigning me to or removing me from a board or card)? Are they active, am I active, or both? It turns out the Trello team several different concepts of "active" they chart, but two they pay a lot of attention to are the number of users who have been active on Trello in the last 28 days (i.e., your pip has gone green), and the number of users who have performed at least four actions in the last 28 days (e.g., create a card, move a card, join a board, etc.). The awesome thing is that those numbers, while obviously less than the total member count, are nothing to sneeze at, and have been moving in proportion to the total member count throughout the time they've been measured. In other words, we have roughly twice as many active users today, by the above metrics, as we did at 500,000. Sorry for the fuzziness, but I hope that at least gives you enough information to know it's not an empty statistic.
- lubos 14y agowhat's wrong with providing that number? I think number of sign-ups is pretty much useless metric. even dead MySpace keeps increasing their sign-ups. It doesn't mean they are doing well. To be honest, I would be really really interested how many active users Trello has. It would be great service to startup community to see what is conversion rate out there for bigger services like Trello. Evernote is very public with their numbers, for example they claim 1/3 of total sign-ups being active users (users who logged into service in last month).
- danabramov 14y agoUm, MySpace isn't dead. Not anymore, anyway. From what I've seen inside, it seems very promising.[0] [0]: http://new.myspace.com http://new.myspace.com
- nthitz 14y agoThat announcement page was buggy for men on Ubuntu Chrome. The page loaded and I saw the text letter but the smaller "title" card was overlayed on top of the letter but was mirrored left to right so you couldn't read it. Looks good on OSX chrome though!
- chollida1 14y ago> That announcement page was buggy for men on Ubuntu Chrome. What about women, did it work fine for them? :)
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoYes, didn't you know - the XX Chrome works fine, but the XY Chrome is a bit buggy. ;-) edit - smiley
- davidbanham 14y agoMissed opportunity for "Chrome-o-some". Disappointing.
- tnorthcutt 14y agoSame here, but on OSX Chrome.
- nachteilig 14y agoWorked ok for me - windows chrome
- monty_singh 14y agoI started using Trello about 2.5 months ago and its really impacted the way I do almost everything for the better. It has made organizing a plan of action for my to-do's and side projects so much easier that I feel like a blow through my tasks now. Congratulations and good luck on your way to 2 million users!
- j45 14y agoI still wish for the deeper Fogbugz integration with Trello that has been coming up for a while. I reasonably use it, would love to use it more, it's Wonderful. :)
- richardofyork 14y agoI wonder how much, it at all, has Trello's success impacted sales of 37 Signals' Basecamp. We cancelled our Basecamp account and switched to Trello after we realized Trello was ideal for our project management needs.
- fady 14y agoi love trello.. i use it for everything and really love what fogcreek has done with it. i do have one suggestion: please make you mobile app faster. the UI, in terms of moving cards to different list is really hard to use and lags a lot. i suggest finding a better solution for that feature, instead of trying to replicate the desktop experience. i rarely use the mobile app for this reason. keep up the good work
- gryphonic 14y agoThis looks like a great service that i didn't know about before. Definitely going to be getting one more user. I wish we could use something like this at work. Since most of this is rather new to me, are there any other great organizational/ basic life services out there? I would be curious to see what other people are using.
- thelarry 14y agoI really like trello. Something about it feels so natural. I like it a heap better than jira + agile plugin. I do like pivitol tracker too, but trello can do more.
- benrhughes 14y agoAt my last place we used Trello from the day it came out (and had used fogbugz for years). At my current place we use jira + agile. I do prefer Trello for high level stuff, but I think jira does a good job of handling both high level and low level tracking in the same app. Their agile stuff seems to be getting better too. I'm glad to see Trello is going so well. It's a great product and a great example of not having to build something that covers every possible use case.
- neel8986 14y agoCan Trello become for node what twitter was for rails?
- pswenson 14y agoI've been pushing for trello over the much slower, less intuitive sprint.ly. the main hangup is the lack of a daily digest report. anyone have a solution?
- hamidpalo 14y agoYou can view board activity which shows everything done recently. The other alternative is to use the API, which is full read/write: trello.com/docs
- justinlilly 14y agoSorry you feel this way, pswenson. Are you still experiencing the slowness on Sprint.ly? Please email me at justin@sprint.ly and I'm happy to help as I can.
- michaelfeathers 14y agoI've just started using it but now that it has 1M users I'm a little apprehensive for the usual reasons: no easy way to export or access offline, and no idea of whether there are any monetization plans on the horizon. It could be another way to get lost in the cloud.
- thedufer 14y agoYou can export your data: see "Portability" at https://trello.com/privacy https://trello.com/privacy I don't know what I can say to ease your worries about monetization. Its definitely something we're working on. That said, Fog Creek is an established company with steady cash flow, so we're not just going to disappear.
- xbryanx 14y agoI don't disagree with you, but they have posted a bit of a response to this worry: https://trello.com/card/let-me-pay-you-for-trello/4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c/1178 https://trello.com/card/let-me-pay-you-for-trello/4d5ea62fd7...
- hayksaakian 14y agoToo many project management platforms nowadays. I'd rather let them compete for a few years and see what comes out on top.
- uses 14y agoTrello is one of those things that I would have said nobody needed, until the first time I touched it and realized the pure joy of moving cards around lists. That's the power of making something that's fun to use.
- DougN7 14y agoThere's a great description about the tech stack at http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-trello-tech-stack/ http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-trello-tech-stack/ Does anyone know how many servers it runs on? I'd like to see a physical tech stack description (is it already out there somewhere? If so, my Google-fu failed me) EDIT: discussion -> description
- bjt 14y agoAs of October 2012, it's on EC2. http://status.fogcreek.com/2012/10/fogbugz-kiln-and-copilot-continue-to-run-on-backup-power-trello-moving-to-amazon-aws.html http://status.fogcreek.com/2012/10/fogbugz-kiln-and-copilot-... I don't know how many instances, or what size.
- pla3rhat3r 14y agoThis is awesome! So happy for these guys! GREAT solution. 1 million is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure they will have millions more.
- IsaacL 14y agoI'm impressed Trello has managed to succeed in what many had written off as overcrowded space. I think the key to its success is the insight that Joel Spolsky explains in his post here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html - that successful apps often provide a new kind of data structure, that makes them suitable for many purposes. (For Trello, that's a "list of lists".) Fog Creek Employees: can anyone comment on who had this original insight? Was it Joel himself or another employee?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- zaidf 14y agothat successful apps often provide a new kind of data structure, that makes them suitable for many purposes And I'd argue that that is also a major reason when apps fail: they force people to change their existing ways of thinking and aren't able to "recruit" enough users/customers. Frankly I wasn't that big on trello and still have major issues with it. For example, when juggling multiple boards, I still don't really know where to begin my workflow. I still don't really know how to see casually what all has been going on across my boards...a lot like a facebook feed. These are critical features that keep me from really engaging with it.
- toyg 14y agoTry connecting to Trello through Hojoki.com , it provides a chronological stream-like interface that might be more to your liking. You can filter by Project etc.
- adrianhoward 14y agoI'm impressed Trello has managed to succeed in what many had written off as overcrowded space. I think the key to its success is the insight that Joel Spolsky explains in his post here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html - that successful apps often provide a new kind of data structure, that makes them suitable for many purposes. (For Trello, that's a "list of lists".) I don't think the data structure was the innovation for Trello. There were lots of products out there that had the columns-of-cards structure. Was (and is) a feature of many agile project management products - following the cards-on-the-wall structure used offline by agile folk. What Trello did - which was brilliant - was sell that as a solution to everybody. Not just the project management folk in dev companies, not just for dev folk, but for folk planning/organising anything. It's spotting that that data structure is generic.
- halis 14y agoI used Trello for a little while, I thought the software was good, but didn't really match my taste. Just didn't like the cards =/
- ChuckMcM 14y agoInteresting tool. This is something I normally do in a notebook (or a text file) so it wasn't like I was out looking for anything to replace that, but if this can add value to that process I'm all for it. One of the things I don't have in my home grown process but wish I did was a way to surface important but not urgent things periodically. Sort of along the memoize theme you need to keep the important things in your head even if you're not currently working on them, and having them surface periodically would assist that. I've had stuff get pushed so far down in the stack that it basically submerges until it becomes an urgent issue.
- rogerbinns 14y agoMy biggest problem with Trello is that they don't support multiple identities. I use it for work and have also created a personal account. What I would expect is a nice dropdown to switch identities (eg like you get with Google or Github). The mobile apps also only have one identity. A work around is in theory to keep logging out and back in again as the different users, but this is extremely tedious and in my case completely impractical as I don't know my passwords (stored in a password manager). On one of Joel's posts it was clear he used Trello for work and for personal activity, but didn't state how that was achieved.
- binxbolling 14y agoI've created multiple boards. Right now I'm at three: one for my personal life, one for my public work life (i.e. shared with colleagues), and one for my private work life that has my own to-dos, lists, etc. Then you use the board dropdown similar to what you wanted for users.
- rogerbinns 14y agoThose are all personal, although your last one includes work information. My work has a separate identity from me, has a separate email address, and has confidential information that needs to be bounded by that work. Intermingling it with boards associated with my personal identity is wrong, and in violation of several work NDAs with partners. It should also be the case that my work can disable/cancel my work account and be confident of no further work related access by me.
- kevingessner 14y agoThis is what Trello organizations are designed for. An org is a collection of boards and a group of people, with permission control. This is Fog Creek's org: https://trello.com/fogcreek https://trello.com/fogcreek You'll just see our public boards, but we also have boards that are visible only to org members. Granting or restricting access to all of them is as simple as adding or removing a user. You can create and be a member of as many orgs as you want.
- lazyjones 14y agoSo what does the 1000000th user win? Nothing? I'm disappointed. ;-)
- edanm 14y agoI've looked at Trello several times, and it's always seemed like a great app to work with... but I never got around to actually using it. So, open question time: How do all you HN'ers use Trello? What kind of things do you manage with it? Bonus for telling us what you used before, and how Trello makes it easier. Super-duper bonus for anything to do with running software projects, and running businesses. Thanks!
- basicallydan 14y agoI used Mingle before in a very large project. It was good enough, but soon I moved to a smaller project (4-7 people at any one time) and switching to Trello has proved to be a real asset. We create cards (story cards, basically) for each user experience and move them to different columns (Backlog, In Progress, Done) and then archive columns at the end of each Iteration. We also have Known Issues columns and we maintain a large amount of our discussions about implementation on cards. Also as the developer on the project, I find it useful to put the individual tasks of each user experience on the corresponding cards, which I can split into lists (such as 'API Tasks' and 'UI Tasks'). It's very flexible, and I've found it to work very well with the way I intuitively do things. I also use it on a small side project that I do with a colleague of mine. We love it. Everyone with whom I work on Trello loves it and we avidly follow its development.
- mleonhard 14y agoBefore Trello, I used a simple text wiki named ZuluPad. Now I use five Trello lists: 1. Customers 2. Follow Up (contacted potential customers) 3. To Do (uncontacted potential customers, features, bug fixes, business tasks) 4. Done 2013-01-06~ (tasks completed this week, nice to look over at the beginning of each week) 5. Wishlist (everything that isn't a priority) I use checklists to keep track of development tasks and testing. I write comments when I interact with a customer. Trello is awesome. I just wish it could make Google Calendar entries for cards that have due dates.
- adrianhoward 14y agoSo, open question time: How do all you HN'ers use Trello? What kind of things do you manage with it? Bonus for telling us what you used before, and how Trello makes it easier. Super-duper bonus for anything to do with running software projects, and running businesses. Things I've been using it for: * Tracking people through recruitment process * Tracking people through usability testing screening / testing / followup process * User stories / hypothesis through dev process * Pretty much everything the company is doing (we have multiple backlogs like Learning, Marketing, Product Ideas, Potential clients, etc. that feed into a separate single kanban-style board that covers the next four or five weeks worth of work) * Used it for open and closed card sorts for UX/IA work. * Organising conferences The thing I like about Trello is that it's pretty much process agnostic. There's very little there that's not related to organising the cards. Which works well for me since what I use by default is cards - or post-it notes - stuck to the wall. I've previously played with pivitol, mingle, basecamp, etc. They were mostly trying to do too much for me and felt like I was trying to mangle my process to fit the tool. Trello lets me fit the tool to my process. The places where I use Trello are where I've not got enough wall space for physical cards (e.g. there are about 200 odd cards on the company backlog board), when I'm working with people in multiple locations, and when I'm doing stuff when I'm on the road. I still have a physical board. When we're in the office for extended periods we pretty much ignore Trello for the "real" board. If we're in/out we keep the physical/trello boards synced. If we're on the road we just use trello and sync on return.
- dfischer 14y agoIf you're looking for an alternative to Trello take a look at http://www.kanbanpad.com http://www.kanbanpad.com we've been working on it for quite a while and it fits a niche that many like.
- terjeto 14y agoMy company has developed a similar product. The philosophy is to combine productivity with fun-factor. Instead of lists-in-lists it is based on a customizable grid (spreadsheet) with sticky notes. https://www.symphonical.com/all-you-need-to-know/ https://www.symphonical.com/all-you-need-to-know/
- KevinMS 14y agoI'm curious if an app like this could have gotten traction if it wasn't put out by a shop like Fog Creek. In other words, if some guy built this in his basement, would anybody have noticed, no matter how great?
- bemmu 14y agoI imagine fame would give you an initial boost, but it would be only temporary without a really good product. The growth curve might look similar to a non-famous developer, but just start at an earlier point on the curve.
- psteinweber 14y agofound in the comments: "I manage my relationship with my girlfriend using Trello. I stack potential gifts for her in one list, briefs on arguments we have in another, etc. My friends share the board and help me resolve the arguments in real time. I use the labels to convey my emotions at a certain point in time for a specific card. I really love her. Fingers crossed she doesn't find out!"
- elchief 14y agomad props to spolsky-spolsky, but pivotal is better.