I think one thing that might help the discussion would be if you could explain a bit more about what you didn't like or thought was missing from other alternatives. IMO, there's nothing wrong with building an alternative because you wanted to, but if there is some feature that you're specifically trying to do support, it would be helpful to mention it here.
Sorry, but I can't see what is better or other than every existing kanban-tool.
I tried it, but you have only drag & drop lists with items and labels, that is all.
Suggestion to the OP: please consider adding a family plan at a lower monthly price point.
On this topic, I really love Kanban boards, but a hosted version (or self-hosted) is not as appealing to me as a native app with some sync.
Years ago, I used to use a closed source but free desktop app on Windows (now long discontinued though) and found that it worked very well for me to track my work.
Apple’s Reminders app has Lists that can be further divided into Sections and then viewed and used (kinda) like a Kanban board, but the UX is not great. The macOS apps, especially, are an abomination with Catalyst.
I’m still looking for a native app that has a simple sync using iCloud or Dropbox. Plus no subscriptions (a one time price per version may be ok). The usage would be for one or two users.
It doesn't have a built-in sync, but people have told me they managed to sync the DB using Dropbox and other such services.
It has a one time payment option to unlock the Kanban feature, but you can also compile it yourself and get all the Pro features for free (all instructions are on GitHub[1]).
I use the KanBan plugin for Obsidian and have quite liked it. It’s basic but it does the job and lets you sync however you want (it’s just a folder with markdown files).
This isn’t something I’ve found with NextJS, but I also haven’t tried a lot of other, similar frameworks because I’m mostly a backend and SRE person who just learned NextJS so I could throw together pretty UIs to demo my backend ideas, so maybe I’m missing things that are well known among front-end specialists.
My experience is that a basic deployment is very easy—it’s like a ten line Dockerfile to build a distroless nodejs container of the standalone build and if you deploy it, it just works.
Then, as performance demands grow, there’s increasingly more complexity in the efforts that must be taken to squeeze additional performance out of it. An easy win is to host the static resources more efficiently with a static file server or better yet a CDN.
A more complex performance optimization is to implement caching.
At some point you start thinking about how to separate the middleware execution from the app so that it can be hosted in more regions or at the edge.
Vercel provides all of those optimizations for free in terms of operational complexity, and charges a lot for it monetarily, but it’s not all that surprising to me that when I host an application it takes some effort to get performance and feature parity with a dedicated hosting provider for that service, just like how I am not surprised that RDS is a little more complicated, more performant, and more reliable than renting the equivalent EC2 and installing Postgres from the package manager.
Caveat: as a backend dev, I’ve never written anything that relied entirely on NextJS as the server side, so I’m approaching this with a certain amount of baseline complexity already assumed. I’ve not touched NextJS static sites or incremental static regeneration.
Do other frontend frameworks make it much easier to incorporate those performance optimizations? My impression is that it’s not all that hard to deploy NextJS, it’s just hard to manage the complexity of optimizing it to the extent that Vercel’s hosting does.
Next.js is not difficult to deploy on a long-lived server. It’s just a normal Node app.
What’s more painful is deployment to other serverless providers because historically they’ve had to reverse-engineer a few details for more advanced features. This is being fixed now in https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/77740 but that work is ongoing.
The difficulty to deploy Next.js is greatly exaggerated in my opinion. It's mostly if you care about some of the more advanced features, like image optimization and hosting static assets on a different origin it can become difficult, but these are features no Next.js alternative generally provide anyway.
Deploying next is difficult, but IMO that's because deploying anything substantial is difficult. I've had my share of nasty deployment debugging that took days and none of it was due to next. (the biggest offenders I've seen are (1) random open source software no one on my team is an expert on, (2) docker / kubernetes, (3) databases, and (4) integration hell)
Maybe it's difficult to deploy to your platform of choice. Deploying to AWS amplify or deploying using sst is matter of minutes or hour.
I have deployed several next.js projects within an hour (not hours) that were created by different teams. The hour includes settings up DNS, CI/CD using github and deploying to AWS Amplify.
Edit:
Why are you down voting it? Is this unbelievable? I have deployed 5/6 next.js projects and none of them are on vercel.
"reimagined" is a weird tagline given that your list of features is the same as Trello's (and Taiga's, etc). Don't get me wrong, I love opensource alternatives, but you did not "reimagine" to make the same thing.
Some years ago, I used Kanboard (it written in php): https://kanboard.org/ . It was ugly but useful (and easy to install because I remember that it didn't need any data base).
This will sound crazy but I wish there was an open source “everything” app. If this could grow into a slack alternative (where channels can host a kanban board) with http bot api and built in charting and dashboards and python notebook snippets etc etc so we can get things in one place… that would be great!!
I absolutely love Trello. Visually super appealing, very fast interface with shortcuts, and an API that allows me to do all sorts of automations (although it offers automations out of the box).
Feedback : when creating a workspace, a board, or a list, pressing "Enter" is not the same as clicking the "Create" button which is the only button visible. Pressing "Enter" does not create the list.
For a new user like me, the difference between a workspace, a board, and a list is not obvious. A one image explanation would be welcomed.
biggest problems with trello, having using it 14 years or so
- if user deletes card/list/board it's gone forever for whole group
- i want to share board with secret link(no login) but this user cannot have rights to open any card, maybe just comment. Not available at all in trello
Congratulation on releasing this project, despite some of the criticism mentioned here.
One issue I encountered.
I cannot seem to create lists containing works like Todo, Done, .... No error message is shown.
Creating lists with random strings always work though.
This looks really nice! I loved trello and I'm always happy to see alternatives. My two cents: I use the keyboard a lot, so when I hit "enter" on a form, e.g. to create a board, it closes the popup instead of creating that board.
IMHO many "open source alternatives to" should drop that tagline.
This sentence is the first thing I read, and likely the last.
I don't know what "Trello" is. I don't see what your project or app could do for me. Even if I knew Trello, I wouldn't know why does it need an alternative. (Trello was (is?) great for personal use, by non-technical people.)
"A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work, track progress, and deliver results—all in one place." This is your selling point, not what your app isn't.
I would be careful suggesting this as a universal truth. I think it really depends on the receiver of the message. "An open-source alternative to Trello" is by far the best one-sentence pitch possible for me. It's something that I've wanted for years so I immediately noticed and clicked into it. Obviously I already know what Trello is, but my suspicion is the most interested people in this project are former Trello users.
"A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work, track progress, and deliver results—all in one place." I would not have even clicked in. "An open source Trello" tells me way more about the app.
Consider also how many apps are described as "the uber for <xyz>". For people who don't know what Uber is that message falls very flat of course, but a lot of people do know what Uber is and saying, "The Uber for handymen" immediately conveys the point of the app.
Nice one, more of a random question: are you planning on having paid only features for the project, or have it fully self-hosted version be the same in terms of features as the hosted one?
The plan currently is to keep cloud and self-hosted exactly the same in terms of features. I'd only consider open-core if I can't find a reliable alternative source of income to support the development of the project :)
[+] [-] henryball|9 months ago|reply
I couldn’t find an open-source alternative to Trello that I liked so I built my own.
It’s fast, free and fully-customisable. You can self host it, or use the cloud version if you don’t want to manage your own infra.
Repo -> https://github.com/kanbn/kan
Cloud -> https://kan.bn
Roadmap -> https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap
I’d love feedback, bug reports, or any feature suggestions!
[+] [-] mbreese|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tiffanyh|9 months ago|reply
Using the kanban for your roadmap, https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap two things I noticed:
1. When I click a card, no data is present. It's just an empty card that says "Activity".
2. After you click a few cards, it hijacks your browser Back button.
[+] [-] andruby|9 months ago|reply
Can you elaborate a bit on what you were missing or didn’t like from the other existing open source Trello clones?
I’m curious what potentially different choices/trade-offs you made.
[+] [-] cellularmitosis|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] AntiqueFig|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jpc0|9 months ago|reply
For many users this isn’t an issue but for use it’s a must have feature.
Will stick to trello for the time being.
[+] [-] progx|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] caseysoftware|9 months ago|reply
What are you doing (plan to do) that is more interesting/compelling/useful than anyone else?
Also, what have you learned so far? What surprised you?
[+] [-] AnonC|9 months ago|reply
On this topic, I really love Kanban boards, but a hosted version (or self-hosted) is not as appealing to me as a native app with some sync.
Years ago, I used to use a closed source but free desktop app on Windows (now long discontinued though) and found that it worked very well for me to track my work.
Apple’s Reminders app has Lists that can be further divided into Sections and then viewed and used (kinda) like a Kanban board, but the UX is not great. The macOS apps, especially, are an abomination with Catalyst.
I’m still looking for a native app that has a simple sync using iCloud or Dropbox. Plus no subscriptions (a one time price per version may be ok). The usage would be for one or two users.
[+] [-] rubymamis|9 months ago|reply
It has a feature that converts your Markdown tasks into a Kanban: https://www.notes-foss.com/videos/kanban.mp4
It doesn't have a built-in sync, but people have told me they managed to sync the DB using Dropbox and other such services.
It has a one time payment option to unlock the Kanban feature, but you can also compile it yourself and get all the Pro features for free (all instructions are on GitHub[1]).
[1] https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes
[+] [-] sen|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] SwiftyBug|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] hxtk|9 months ago|reply
My experience is that a basic deployment is very easy—it’s like a ten line Dockerfile to build a distroless nodejs container of the standalone build and if you deploy it, it just works.
Then, as performance demands grow, there’s increasingly more complexity in the efforts that must be taken to squeeze additional performance out of it. An easy win is to host the static resources more efficiently with a static file server or better yet a CDN.
A more complex performance optimization is to implement caching.
At some point you start thinking about how to separate the middleware execution from the app so that it can be hosted in more regions or at the edge.
Vercel provides all of those optimizations for free in terms of operational complexity, and charges a lot for it monetarily, but it’s not all that surprising to me that when I host an application it takes some effort to get performance and feature parity with a dedicated hosting provider for that service, just like how I am not surprised that RDS is a little more complicated, more performant, and more reliable than renting the equivalent EC2 and installing Postgres from the package manager.
Caveat: as a backend dev, I’ve never written anything that relied entirely on NextJS as the server side, so I’m approaching this with a certain amount of baseline complexity already assumed. I’ve not touched NextJS static sites or incremental static regeneration.
Do other frontend frameworks make it much easier to incorporate those performance optimizations? My impression is that it’s not all that hard to deploy NextJS, it’s just hard to manage the complexity of optimizing it to the extent that Vercel’s hosting does.
[+] [-] danabramov|9 months ago|reply
What’s more painful is deployment to other serverless providers because historically they’ve had to reverse-engineer a few details for more advanced features. This is being fixed now in https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/77740 but that work is ongoing.
[+] [-] herrkanin|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] RitzyMage|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] TiredOfLife|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kashnote|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] yc942|9 months ago|reply
I have deployed several next.js projects within an hour (not hours) that were created by different teams. The hour includes settings up DNS, CI/CD using github and deploying to AWS Amplify.
Edit: Why are you down voting it? Is this unbelievable? I have deployed 5/6 next.js projects and none of them are on vercel.
[+] [-] remram|9 months ago|reply
"reimagined" is a weird tagline given that your list of features is the same as Trello's (and Taiga's, etc). Don't get me wrong, I love opensource alternatives, but you did not "reimagine" to make the same thing.
[+] [-] mdtrooper|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rsolva|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kiney|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wood_spirit|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] subpixel|9 months ago|reply
Be advised that Trello is now $5/mo. It's gonna be hard to compete here.
[+] [-] xet7|9 months ago|reply
https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/IFTTT
And webhooks:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44165008
WeKan has these, that Trello does not have: Swimlanes, all code Open Source, On-Premise hosting, etc
[+] [-] croes|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] singiamtel|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] henryball|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rodolphoarruda|9 months ago|reply
Congrats! That's a brave move. I've been using Kanboard for years. Good luck with your project!
[+] [-] henryball|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] submeta|9 months ago|reply
Will check out your solution.
[+] [-] column|9 months ago|reply
For a new user like me, the difference between a workspace, a board, and a list is not obvious. A one image explanation would be welcomed.
[+] [-] anonymous344|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] xet7|9 months ago|reply
https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/REST-API-Role
https://github.com/wekan/wekan/blob/main/api.py
[+] [-] akshayKMR|9 months ago|reply
I tried the demo at https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap but clicking on the card shows the skeleton placeholder, doesn't seem to load the card content.
[+] [-] oldgregg|9 months ago|reply
https://github.com/plankanban/planka
[+] [-] abcd_f|9 months ago|reply
In which way exactly?
Also, is there a demo account to try it out?
[+] [-] tspng|9 months ago|reply
One issue I encountered. I cannot seem to create lists containing works like Todo, Done, .... No error message is shown. Creating lists with random strings always work though.
[+] [-] henryball|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Jean-Philipe|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ramoz|9 months ago|reply
$ docker pull kanboard/kanboard:latest
$ docker run -d --name kanboard -p 8080:80 -e PLUGIN_INSTALLER=true kanboard/kanboard:latest
(admin/admin)
[+] [-] rollcat|9 months ago|reply
This sentence is the first thing I read, and likely the last.
I don't know what "Trello" is. I don't see what your project or app could do for me. Even if I knew Trello, I wouldn't know why does it need an alternative. (Trello was (is?) great for personal use, by non-technical people.)
"A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work, track progress, and deliver results—all in one place." This is your selling point, not what your app isn't.
[+] [-] freedomben|9 months ago|reply
"A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work, track progress, and deliver results—all in one place." I would not have even clicked in. "An open source Trello" tells me way more about the app.
Consider also how many apps are described as "the uber for <xyz>". For people who don't know what Uber is that message falls very flat of course, but a lot of people do know what Uber is and saying, "The Uber for handymen" immediately conveys the point of the app.
[+] [-] stronglikedan|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] imglorp|9 months ago|reply
Trello was a popular, free, simple sticky note kanban board. It was too nice, maybe competing with Jira, so Atlassian ate it, leaving a void again.
[+] [-] xet7|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tarasyarema|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] henryball|9 months ago|reply