Balsamiq vs. Trello

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Balsamiq
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Balsamiq is a wireframing tool that helps lean product teams turn early ideas into clear, actionable direction. The tool helps product managers, founders, and engineers worldwide share concepts, reduce rework, and build better products.
$12
per month (up to 2 projects)
Trello
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Trello from Atlassian is a project management tool based on a Kanban framework. Trello is ideal for task-management in a to-do list format. It supports sharing boards and cards across users or teams. The product offers a free version, and paid versions add greater automation, collaboration, and administrative control.
$6
per month per user
Pricing
BalsamiqTrello
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$6
per month per user
Premium
$12.50
per month per user
Enterprise
$17.50
per month per user
Free
Forever Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BalsamiqTrello
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPay per project, not per userA discount is offered for annual billing and for larger numbers of users.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BalsamiqTrello
Considered Both Products
Balsamiq
Chose Balsamiq
We have used some other alternatives and Balsamiq is the best one for fastest results.
InVision and Justinmind both work very well and have great tools for collaboration and making interactive mockups. With Justinmind, I have done some app mockups that felt almost functional …
Chose Balsamiq
Balsamiq is selected for cost and product quality. It is inductive, so it does not require much support or courses to start using it, it does not take up much space on the server, it is very light. It can be used in several operating systems. You can load the Bootstrap library, …
Trello

No answer on this topic

Features
BalsamiqTrello
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Balsamiq
-
Ratings
Trello
8.5
222 Ratings
9% above category average
Task Management00 Ratings9.5222 Ratings
Resource Management00 Ratings9.3185 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings7.173 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings9.1168 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings8.2142 Ratings
Team Collaboration00 Ratings9.0218 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology00 Ratings8.9147 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology00 Ratings7.6115 Ratings
Document Management00 Ratings8.1159 Ratings
Email integration00 Ratings7.6146 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings9.1192 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking00 Ratings9.288 Ratings
Change request and Case Management00 Ratings8.8102 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management00 Ratings7.673 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
Balsamiq
-
Ratings
Trello
6.0
72 Ratings
25% below category average
Quotes/estimates00 Ratings6.149 Ratings
Invoicing00 Ratings5.042 Ratings
Project & financial reporting00 Ratings6.758 Ratings
Integration with accounting software00 Ratings6.144 Ratings
User Ratings
BalsamiqTrello
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(31 ratings)
9.4
(222 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(60 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.9
(81 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BalsamiqTrello
Likelihood to Recommend
Balsamiq
Balsamiq is a great tool for quickly getting ideas into visual form. At first it seems like there are not that many UI assets, but this constraint actually adds to the speed. There are less things for you to fuss over, you can focus on getting your ideas down. This is a tool for lofi rough drawings not a tool for building beautiful prototypes for developers to code to. It is fantastic for ideation because you mostly just drag and drop components onto the canvas and move things around. It's great in a live workshop setting for that reason.
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Atlassian
For teams or individuals with lots of individual tasks/details to track, Trello is perfect! It basically removes the need for a paper checklist. For those that need an overall project management tool that requires less tasks and more overarching goals, collaboration amongst various teams, and gantt charts I would suggest monday.com
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Pros
Balsamiq
  • Easy to use
  • Produces good quality mock ups and prototypes
  • Mock ups are obviously only just mock ups (this is important as if users see mock-ups in HTML, for example, they tend to think the system is ready to use or not far off)
  • Has a good selection of standard shapes that mock real world fields / controls
  • Allows not for profit organisations use it for free
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Atlassian
  • Helps track employees "to do before hire", "to do after hired," and "to do when employee leaves"
  • Provides important information on each employee like personal information along with data collected during the time of hire and during employment time
  • Allows more than one person to be assigned to a task per employee and will remain open until everyone involved has completed their task
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Cons
Balsamiq
  • The sketch-like style can be off-putting to some stakeholders, and it’s not initially very clear that there is the option to turn this “off.” While I do think there is benefit to the default style, knowing from the start that this flexibility existed would have helped us be able to use this tool more often in the past and in different situations.
  • There are very limited collaborative functionalities. When it’s early in the design process, it’s often really helpful to have a number of people in the design to offer in-app feedback so the designer doesn’t have the burden of collecting feedback from many disparate sources in order to incorporate the feedback.
  • There are limited UI elements. As design evolves, there are more and more UI elements to consider, and many to stop using. Our Balsamiq wireframes would be a lot more effective in communicating design ideas to stakeholders if there was a wider range of UI elements to choose from.
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Atlassian
  • I use colour coding a lot so I would like a wider range of colour options.
  • Also as a visual thinker I would like to be able to easily add images to cards.
  • I would like to be able to attach a wider range of file formats to cards.
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Likelihood to Renew
Balsamiq
I'm not sure how else we would be able to complete our work without Balsamiq or another similar tool. All of my experience with Balsamiq has been positive and they continue to develop new features so that my job gets easier. I would be very surprised if we didn't renew Balsamiq
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Atlassian
I am very likely to renew Trello, because it doesn't cost anything to do so. I am also very likely to use Trello's upgraded features in the future because a lot of my team's data is stored on there and they have already gotten used to the platform. Trello is very easy for new team members to pick up, making the onboarding and usability very streamlined.
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Usability
Balsamiq
Very intuitive and easy to understand. It only takes minutes to get the hang of it and get back to work. For new analysts (like, brand new, fresh out of school) it's not difficult and they need minimal to no hand-holding. The training content that is embedded is easy to find and use.
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Atlassian
Trello is incredibly intuitive, both on desktop and mobile right away. It is also full of helpful features that make it even easier to use, and is flexible enough to suit almost any organizational need. Onboarding for the software is thorough, but concise, and the service is frequently updated with even more QOL improvements.
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Reliability and Availability
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Atlassian
yes always support available when I need it!
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Performance
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Atlassian
Never experienced issues with the above!
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Support Rating
Balsamiq
We haven't had to use the support feature yet
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Atlassian
I haven't reached out to their support very often and their support is very limited anyway for the free users. They do have tons of great articles and videos in their Help Center and constantly send emails with updates and add-ons to the product. The fact that I've barely ever had to contact their support team means that they've developed a great product.
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In-Person Training
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Atlassian
It was helpful and informative! It was back before the pandemic in 2019 so I'm not sure if they still do it but I really enjoyed the experience
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Implementation Rating
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Atlassian
For our small business, getting a few of us started well on Trello was the key, I think. As long as a couple of us were really comfortable with the interface, we could lead others and help them with any questions. From now on, anyone who works with us just naturally uses Trello for information sharing - it's just part of what we do.
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Alternatives Considered
Balsamiq
Creating digital wireframes in Photoshop is a nightmare. Photoshop was not really designed for this purpose. It doesn't have good collaboration options and it doesn't allow pattern libraries, which are essential for consistency and efficiency. We use UXPin and Axure for some time, but found that these platforms were a bit bloated. Balsamiq is much simpler than any of these options. It's a perfect wireframing platform for non-designers or for designers that want to focus on content and element-placement prior to design
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Atlassian
Trello is more simple and not as "robust" as the other tools, but it's easier to use and manage and understand and ACTUALLY get stuff done with. It's simplicity is part of the beauty of using it. You don't need a million options that nobody uses, you just need to get stuff done.
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Scalability
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Atlassian
Feels like anyone across the org (no matter their location) can use the tool easily!
Read full review
Professional Services
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Atlassian
Not sure if we use those
Read full review
Return on Investment
Balsamiq
  • The product works very well for showing product owners and developers design ideas for purposes of discussion, debate and refinement.
  • The products also works very well for specifying new designs for developers. This is best done in a series of screens that show various screen states and user interactions.
  • I also use the products to document bugs in software products and websites we have developed. This includes outlining and documenting bugs and changes to user interactions and refinements to the usability of completed interfaces and user experiences.
Read full review
Atlassian
  • Trello keeps me organized, focused, and on track. I could filter the Trello board to only see my issues and understand what I needed to work on and when.
  • Trello helped our team implement an agile structure. It's a very simple kanban method of viewing all of your team's tasks and statuses. You can completely customize the columns to your team's specific workflow and create tags relevant to your work.
  • Trello helps reduce unnecessary communications between teams. When I want to request translations, I simply create a card on the localization Trello board -- no need to directly message anyone on the team, and I can watch the status of the card change from "in progress" to "in review" to "translated," all without having to directly ask for updates.
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ScreenShots

Balsamiq Screenshots

Screenshot of the Balsamiq user interfaceScreenshot of the commenting feature, which supports collaborationScreenshot of where to export wireframes to PDF and PNGScreenshot of where to add wireframes to Confluence pages to clarify ideas, make specs visual, and align teamsScreenshot of where to add wireframes to Jira issues to clarify specs, reduce rework, and help teams build the right thing