Pivotal Tracker vs. Trello

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Pivotal Tracker
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Pivotal Tracker is a project management program primarily for software developers. It is built from the ground up to facilitate the agile development cycle, and is optimized for structuring projects in sprints, or “stories.” The solution is now owned and supported by VMware, and is part of the Pivotal / Tanzu product line up.N/A
Trello
Score 8.0 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.
$12.50
per user/per month
Pricing
Pivotal TrackerTrello
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Business Class
$12.50
per user/per month
Enterprise
$17.50
per user/per month
Free
Forever Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Pivotal TrackerTrello
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Pivotal TrackerTrello
Considered Both Products
Pivotal Tracker
Chose Pivotal Tracker
I personally prefer Pivotal Tracker to Trello, but Trello has it's advantages. Trello, through its card system, allows for more organization at a more specific level than Pivotal Tracker does. Pivotal Tracker has better bug tracking with its status updates, and gives a project …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
In my opinion, Trello is more of a pretty UI than a agile tracker. So, if you have a technical team where you want to increase efficiency, I would go with Pivotal Tracker.
Chose Pivotal Tracker
I have also used Trello and JIRA. A small company with only a couple of projects may be best suited with Trello due to its cost and simplicity, whereas JIRA may be better suited for a large company that can afford a dedicated JIRA manager, due to its complex configurations and …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Our organization actually does not exclusively use Pivotal. We also have teams on solutions like Trello and LeanKit. It's all preference, those who buy into all the agile features that pivotal provides, love it. Those who do not need all the overhead, simply use a different …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker, for better or worse, provides a more structured and rigid workflow than most. That makes it easy to get started, but if you have your own workflow you want to integrate into it, it could mean it'll take longer to get used to or customize. It's still more …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Compared to other task management tools, Pivotal Tracker has the best blend of functionality and cost. When you need something simpler than JIRA, and not solely focused on code or UI related tasks like BugHerd, and have a more direct approach to completing tasks than Trello - I …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker, Asana and Trello all have free versions making them ideal for smaller companies to try out. All of them blast Kannan boards and issue tracking capabilities. While Trello and Asana are great products in themselves, Pivotal Tracker edges them out with its wealth …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
It's not necessarily a matter of better vs. worse when it comes to all of these different tools. They all serve a different purpose to different sized teams. I found Pivotal Tracker and monday.com to be a matter of preference while serving a similar purpose. Good for smaller …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
I haven't used dev-specific tools other than Pivotal Tracker but it's useful because it is built for a specific use case. The simplicity of an Asana or Trello is great and they have their advantages, but the additional functionality mentioned was worthwhile and a compelling …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker keeps users 'close' to the software project(s) by allowing users to understand, in plain words, the tasks and expectations of each software release, whereas other tools are either way too close to the source code or require an extensive amount of maintenance. …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
We selected Pivotal Tracker because it is highly opinionated about the process. It worked quite well for what we were expecting from it. Other software we tried were much more flexible, so we could implement our own process there.
Chose Pivotal Tracker

We selected Pivotal Tracker because of its simple, elegant workflow. This is the ideal; it's where we want to be. So we continue to improve, and as we get better, we get more out of the software.

The other software products we evaluated were too complex, and we found that …

Chose Pivotal Tracker
Our team has evaluated Basecamp, Trello, and others but overall preferred the simple and flexible layout of Pivotal Tracker.
Chose Pivotal Tracker
I used to be a huge JIRA fan, until I realized how much time I was spending fixing complicated custom workflows and statuses. I spend almost no time administering Pivotal Tracking. And it turns out, those complicated, custom workflows weren't helping us anyway.
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Overall I have found that I prefer using Pivotal over all the competitors I've tried. There are certain aspects of the other products which I do like but as a whole Pivotal does a better job. My one request is that I feel it is very much a web app and the other products have …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Rally is too complicated - there are far too many fields that all have the same meaning. It's a better agile tool in my opinion since it it was designed purely as an agile tool, but since the CA technologies acquisition, the tool has become more complicated and there are far …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Compared to Rally the tool seems more accessible because or the suite of apps available. It also feels more polished and stable than Rally. It definitely has more tools and features but again it can be overkill for a smaller team or project.
Trello
Chose Trello
Trello is very good for communicating plans between developers and management. It's much better than my memories of Pivotal Tracker, tries to provide better tools for agile methodology, but I found it rather difficult to use well. For initial planning within our team we use …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Pivotal TrackerTrello
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Pivotal Tracker
-
Ratings
Trello
7.8
204 Ratings
4% above category average
Task Management00 Ratings9.2204 Ratings
Resource Management00 Ratings8.1169 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings7.567 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings7.8155 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings7.8130 Ratings
Team Collaboration00 Ratings8.8200 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology00 Ratings8.1138 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology00 Ratings8.0109 Ratings
Document Management00 Ratings7.3147 Ratings
Email integration00 Ratings7.4135 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings7.7178 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking00 Ratings7.382 Ratings
Change request and Case Management00 Ratings8.095 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management00 Ratings6.969 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
Pivotal Tracker
-
Ratings
Trello
7.2
67 Ratings
3% below category average
Quotes/estimates00 Ratings7.047 Ratings
Invoicing00 Ratings7.540 Ratings
Project & financial reporting00 Ratings6.653 Ratings
Integration with accounting software00 Ratings7.641 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Pivotal TrackerTrello
Small Businesses
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.9 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.9 out of 10
SAP Ruum
SAP Ruum
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.9 out of 10
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Pivotal TrackerTrello
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(32 ratings)
9.0
(204 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Usability
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(42 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(9 ratings)
8.0
(79 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Pivotal TrackerTrello
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware by Broadcom
The UI of the Pivotal tracker is really beautiful and amazing, which looks trivial, but we have it open all the time, so it's nice for us. In Pivotal tracker for me its very Easy to create tasks or stories anytime without facing any problems. Pivotal tracker provides us a ton of features to track the tasks and manage a team and the projects. Pivotal tracker allows for a entire team to be on the same page of the tool in regards to where is the project right now, right status of every task, what is being worked on and by whom.
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Atlassian
It is well suited to my job requirements as I bring employees in, and I help offboard them as well. This tool helps me when I need to make sure all items are completed by a certain time frame, so I would say it holds us accountable. Someone who doesn't manage a group of people may not find this as useful when dealing with others but could use it for their own accountability when needing to track their accomplishments.
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Pros
VMware by Broadcom
  • It's great for tracking milestones and reporting team velocity per sprint.
  • Maintaining a prioritized backlog that is sharable with different members of your team is relatively simple.
  • There's a free version of the product for up to 3 collaborators working on 2 projects and the starting price for larger packages is relatively low.
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Atlassian
  • It helps make various workspaces. Each workspace can be used for a different set of task management and can be shared with the people involved.
  • Creating task lists. We can create various task lists, the list title could be the status of the task, for example, In progress, approval, completed, etc. You can slide your task cards from one list title to another.
  • Trello cards have a huge set of features like adding the heading and description of the task, you can also attach certain associated links and documents to the cards as well.
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Cons
VMware by Broadcom
  • In-story task management is still a weak point. The ability to @mention users in tasks and mark tasks as 'in-progress' would go a long way.
  • Epics do not span projects. This becomes troublesome when scaling Pivotal Tracker's agile methodology to multiple teams.
  • Splitting stories is often confusing for team members as there is no concept of a 'parent' story with child stories that have split off of it. There are only two levels: Epic & Story.
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Atlassian
  • Allow tables as content for comment or description in Cards
  • Assign priority to certain cards (easy for sorting)
  • Create an open invite link for others to join/view the Trello board, without edit rights (so people don't need to install/use Trello if they want a quick glance on what's going on)
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Likelihood to Renew
VMware by Broadcom
I love the simplicity, non-configurability, and price/performance of this tool. Hands down my favorite project management tool for agile.
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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
VMware by Broadcom
It works good enough. I didn't have many problems with that. The user interface is a bit confusing though. The team took some time to understand where some configurations were.
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Atlassian
Overall, Trello is a great tool to use. It's very user-friendly, very powerful and we've set it up to work well for our team. I've recommended it to others who need something free or very cheap and it's worked well for them too. If you're wanting something with more muscle, then I'd suggest looking at either monday.com or Airtable.
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Support Rating
VMware by Broadcom
We've never had to request support in the 5 years I have been using it. A solid solution! Everything I have had questions about is on the website. New features are in their newsletter with more details on their website. Often I am using the new features within a few minutes of reading the article.
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Atlassian
I haven't had much need to contact their support because the product is easy to use and pretty bug-free. I did reach out to them about swimlanes and I was able to find the information I needed very quickly and it was thorough and accurate information about current functionality. I love that they use their own product. That's always a good sign.
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Implementation Rating
VMware by Broadcom
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
VMware by Broadcom
We have had employees in the past look at Drupal, and other open source project management tools to assist in our needs. Unfortunately each solution took too much time to implement, design and configure that we could not stop the work we were doing for clients to complete a full set up of a project tracker. Thankfully Pivotal is a predefined solution with no configuration needed. Simply input your projects, design your Stories with Tasks and begin your tracking.
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Atlassian
Trello is easy for a non-technical person to use. Other management systems, like MS Project, frighten away less computer-savvy users. I've found this to be instrumental in getting volunteers to agree to step in and get fully involved with projects--particularly those that might span the entire year or involve many different pieces to completion.
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Return on Investment
VMware by Broadcom
  • Time is money with development and a lot of things can fall through the cracks. Having a good system for making sure you're building the most relevant product for customers is really important so it was well worth it for us.
  • The process we used worked for us and it helped us streamline our development which reduced a lot of things falling through the cracks and headaches. I'm sure there are other products that can do the same job just as effectively but Pivotal Tracker worked well for us.
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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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