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Why We Stopped Paying for Trello: A Kanban Alternative That Actually Links to Your CRM

Our sales team ditched Trello after the pricing changes. Here's the kanban board we built instead — it connects to deals, invoices, and calendar events.

Boards, lists, cards — simple enough until you need them to talk to the rest of your business.

The moment Trello stopped making sense

Our six-person sales team had used Trello for years. Free tier, a handful of Power-Ups, maybe $50/month when we needed calendar sync. Then the pricing changed. What was once free now required Standard at $6/user/month. The features we actually used — unlimited boards, custom fields, calendar view — sat behind a paywall.

More frustrating: every time we closed a deal in our CRM, someone had to manually move a Trello card. Every time a deadline shifted, someone updated two tools. Trello was a silo. The work happened there, but the context lived somewhere else.

We needed a kanban board that was part of the system, not pasted on top of it.

What a “Trello alternative” actually means

Most “alternatives” are just Trello clones with a different logo. They copy the board/list/card structure, add a few integrations, and call it a day.

We wanted something different:

  1. Cards that link to real objects — deals, invoices, calendar events — not just text descriptions.
  2. No artificial limits — unlimited boards, swimlanes, and custom fields without upgrading.
  3. Offline-first — edits save locally, sync when online; no spinner when your Wi-Fi drops.
  4. One data layer — when a contact updates in CRM, it updates everywhere.

That’s what Kanban in the Vault delivers.

The switch: what gato Kanban does differently

Cards carry context, not just titles

In Trello, a card is a blob of Markdown. In gato Kanban, a card can link to:

  • A CRM deal (click to open the deal, see activity timeline)
  • A calendar event (due date syncs both ways)
  • An invoice (see payment status without switching apps)
  • A Drive file (preview attachments inline)

You’re not copying deal IDs into card titles. The link is live.

Swimlanes by default

Horizontal swimlanes let you slice boards by priority, assignee, or any custom dimension. Trello hides this behind Premium. Here it’s just how boards work.

WIP limits that teach flow

Set a limit on a column. When you exceed it, the column header turns amber. Kanban theory says: stop starting, start finishing. Visual cues enforce it.

Keyboard-first

c to connect, v to select, Delete to remove, Space to pan. Power users stay in the zone.

A real workflow: closing a deal

Here’s how our sales team uses Kanban now:

  1. Opportunity enters CRM — new deal lands in “Qualified” stage.
  2. Card auto-appears on the Sales board, linked to that deal.
  3. Drag to “Proposal Sent” — the CRM stage updates. No double entry.
  4. Attach the estimate — link to the Invoice app’s estimate doc; click to preview line items.
  5. Set due date — a calendar event is created; reminders fire automatically.
  6. Close won — drag to Done; the deal closes; the invoice generates.

One board. One source of truth. Zero copy-paste.

What you keep from Trello

  • Drag-and-drop cards between columns
  • Checklists with progress bars
  • Labels, tags, filters
  • Card descriptions with rich text
  • Activity history

We didn’t reinvent the wheel. We just bolted it to the rest of the car.

Try it

Open the Kanban app — no credit card, no install. Create a board, drag some cards, and see how it feels when your tasks are connected to everything else.

If you’re migrating from Trello, export your boards as JSON and import them with our migration guide (coming soon).

Because Kanban lives in the Vault, your boards connect to:

  • CRM — deals sync to cards
  • Doc — link documents to cards for specs and meeting notes
  • Grid — pull spreadsheet data into card custom fields
  • Calendar — due dates create events

One platform, no integrations to maintain.