10 Top Free Kanban Boards
The top free Kanban boards are perfect for teams with limited capital to organize their activities and spur productivity. Use the Kanban process to …
- Identify delays and bottlenecks instantly.
- Eliminate communication problems.
- Complete projects faster.
Our choices for the best free kanban boards are:
Comparison Chart of Basic Features
** Trello, Asana, and Clickup are our top three choices for free kanban boards.
Clickable Links
Max Users
Projects
Storage
Attachments
What is a Kanban Board?
Kanban is a work control method that visually represents the status of each step of projects and tasks. Kanban makes it easy to see where you need to focus your workflow to be more productive.
How does it work?
A Kanban board helps you manage work more efficiently because:
- You have a visual representation where you can see the progress of everything at once.
- You can instantly identify delays and bottlenecks.
- You eliminate communication problems.
- And you complete projects faster.
Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, developed Kanban to improve his manufacturing efficiency. He designed Kanban to eliminate bottlenecks in workflow while providing an overview of project status. Now, it’s a popular approach for agile project management.
The Kanban method is incremental because a project usually can’t move forward until you complete dependent tasks. This incremental element encourages greater employee accountability and productivity and prevents mistakes from jeopardizing the entire project.
Furthermore, because multiple people share and collaborate on the task board, project objectives remain in focus. Team members can quickly clear up more minor questions through chat messaging and comments.
Benefits of Kanban
Kanban systems deliver unique benefits that are often a better fit for agile strategies.
- The Kanban method is more flexible than other project management processes.
- Online Kanban boards enable much greater collaboration than other systems. Everyone with permission enabled can modify, create, and update activities on the board.
- The Kanban system is also better for teams that must carefully observe individual task progress within the project.
- Kanban boards help managers and employees better identify roadblocks, deliver more accurate deadline estimations to clients, and stop team members from getting overburdened.
Additional Kanban benefits include:
- Adaptable user roles
- Easy to modify or adjust workflow when needed without nullifying previous work
- Complete team access to updates and files
- Manage equitable work distribution.
- Flexible enough for a wide assortment of projects and priorities.
Create a Kanban Board In 3 Easy Steps
Top Three Free Kanban Boards
The following free Kanban boards deliver basic features like task creation/assignment, collaboration, file sharing and storage, task prioritization, and commenting.
Some of these platforms also have paid versions that offer more features and allow larger teams.
Trello
Trello is our choice for ease of use and collaboration.
Trello is one of the most prominent Kanban software choices. It has web, mobile, and desktop versions. It may be known best for Butler, its automation feature that saves time by automating your boards’ routine tasks. Admins can establish rule-based triggers that start many automated tasks like the calendar and due dates.
Here’s a short video tour of Trello’s main features.
Trello is best for:
- Creating content calendars.
- Event planning and outreach.
- Product planning, development, and launch.
- Planning lessons and tracking homework assignments in online education.
- Tracking individual goals and managing tasks.
The most popular features of Trello are:
- Unlimited personal boards, cards, lists, and ten team boards.
- Users can directly add comments, attachments, due dates, and more to Trello cards.
- They can collaborate on projects from start to finish.
- Set deadlines, attach checklists, tag other users in comments, and re-prioritize tasks.
PROS
CONS
Asana is our choice for quick task creation and flexible project management.
Asana is a cloud-based software for workflow management with mobile apps options. Users can add task cards to Kanban boards, organized and filtered by team, deadline, priority, or tag. Task cards feature a completion percentage bar.
Asana is best for:
- Quick task creation and flexible project management.
- Content marketing planning.
- Lawyers who need better case management and organization systems.
- Outreach planning.
The most popular features of Asana are:
- Team collaboration.
- Workflow and task management.
- Users can add unlimited cards to Kanban boards, organized and filtered by deadline, priority, team, or tag.
- Each card also has a percentage bar header, showing how near the task is to completion.
- In Asana, users can also upload task “requests,” which team members can approve or deny based on their current workload.
PROS
CONS
ClickUp
ClickUp is our choice as the best option for business startups.
ClickUp is a web-based project management and Kanban software that couples simple project updates and status notices with advanced cross-team collaboration and task-tracking functions. It’s well suited for small, growing, or large businesses. It has web, desktop, and mobile versions.
ClickUp is best for:
- Users who need maximum features and customization.
- Users who expect to eventually expand to a paid version.
- Freelancers, startups, small businesses.
- Projects with remote teams.
- Horizontal projects.
The most popular features of ClickUp are:
- Team management
- Users can assign tasks and comments to a specific team or members of a team.
- They can also mark these comments as ‘in progress’ or ‘resolved’ and make custom statuses.
- Time tracking, goal tracking, and progress monitoring.
- Variety of project view options. ClickUp has a hierarchy of views to help users organize their projects:
- Teams
- Spaces
- Projects
- Lists
- Tasks
- Subtasks
PROS
CONS
Other Free Kanban Boards
MeisterTask
MeisterTask is a cloud-based Kanban software best known for its natural interface and sturdy mobile application. It’s also a perfect option for those currently using a different Kanban application that doesn’t suit their needs. It allows users to import data from Trello and Asana into MeisterTask directly.
MeisterTask is best for:
- Teams that rely heavily on using the mobile application.
- Managing customer support.
- Managing inventory and shipping.
The most popular features of MeisterTask are:
- Task dependency functions
- Users who rely heavily on task relationships will like that MeisterTask allows them to set task dependencies, link tasks and cards together, and copy cards to multiple boards. Users can also block or unblock tasks in an unforeseen situation.
- Migration feature that allows you to migrate data from Trello and Asana.
PROS
CONS
Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects is a web-based program for project management and planning. Its primary features are storing and sharing documents, assigning tasks, updating status, and ranking tasks by urgency level. Users can also specify task relationships, log problems onto boards and cards directly from external websites, and evaluate current team member workloads to prevent overloading.
Zoho Projects is best for:
- Users who need to track billable hours.
- Sustaining safety and quality criteria in chemical labs.
- Real estate brokers to track sales and listings.
- Overseeing construction site progress and materials.
The most popular features of Zoho Projects are:
- Friendly user interface.
- Ability to define, assign and track each of the tasks being executed and estimate costs.
- Time tracking and timesheets.
- Real-time notifications.
PROS
CONS
Backlog
Backlog by Nulab is an online app that works bes for programmers. It’s ideal for groups seeking a lightweight, user-friendly Kanban app without sophisticated project management features.
Backlog is best for:
- Planning events and product launches.
- Managing the hiring process.
- Software developers.
- Inbound marketing projects.
The most popular features of Backlog are:
- Built-in wikis.
- Multi-device syncing.
- Simple task tracking and management features without complexity.
PROS
CONS
YouTrack
YouTrack is an agile Kanban app produced mainly for IT and customer service teams to handle support tickets. Current clients include Samsung, Ferrari, Ericsson, and HP.
YouTrack is best for:
- Marketers that do lead generation and tracking.
- Game and app developers.
- Content creation and marketing teams.
- Web designers.
The most popular features of YouTrack are:
- Drag-and-drop interface.
- Pre-made templates.
- Task commenting and user mentions.
- Ability to set a limit for the current number of simultaneous tasks.
PROS
CONS
Teamwork
Teamwork is a web-based Kanban tool used by well-known companies like HP, Paypal, Netflix, and Disney. The Portfolio Kanban view is a bird’s eye glimpse of tasks, assignees, project status, and allows for project prioritization.
Teamwork is best for:
- Remote educators developing e-learning courses.
- Planning and managing marketing campaigns.
- Product development and product launches.
- Resource management.
The most popular features of Teamwork are:
- Bird’s eye view feature shows everything that’s happening.
- Time tracking per project and task.
- Multiple views for project tasks, including list view, Kanban Board, and Gantt Chart.
PROS
CONS
Kanban Tool
Kanban Tool is a visual project management platform for optimizing workflow and team collaboration. It helps you to analyze and improve your work processes, thereby increasing your efficiency. It’s easy to use, highly customizable, and fast.
Kanban Tool is best for:
- Managing email marketing campaigns.
- Online retailer customer journey mapping.
- Organizing consultants’ billable tasks and hours.
The most popular features of Kanban Tool are:
- The easy-to-use interface.
- Time and expense tracking.
- Checklist display.
PROS
CONS
KanbanFlow
KanbanFlow is a simple workflow management tool devised to limit the amount of works-in-progress and recognize recurring blockages.
KanbanFlow is best for:
- Managers needing team-wide to-do lists.
- Teams without the need to upload files to boards or use integrations.
- Development teams seeking simpler Trello alternatives.
The most popular features of KanbanFlow are:
- Built-in Pomodoro and timer and time tracking capability.
- Generate reports for the time you spend on tasks.
PROS
CONS
A Final Word About Free Kanban Boards
Before you choose a Kanban board, carefully consider what you need now and how you expect to grow in the future. The Pros and Cons of any particular board may not be important for your needs. It’s a good idea to spend some time on a few of the boards to experience the different interfaces and features before you choose one. Test some of the features you will need for your projects.
I hope you find great success!
Loyd