• Trello has announced that from 8th April, users on its free tier will be limited to 10 collaborators.
• Free users with more than 10 collaborators will have their ability to edit cards and boards in Trello switched off on 20th May.
• The Standard tier of Trello is the most affordable at $5 per user per month.

Free tiers in productivity software are a boon for small businesses. Rather than having to shell out hundreds of dollars (which can get expensive quickly in South Africa) for a subscription to a suite of tools, a free tier lets you harness some of the features of that software.

Case in point is Trello which is a fantastic piece of project-tracking software that integrates with many other applications. Unfortunately, Trello is about to get worse for free users.

Starting on 8th April, Free Workspaces will be limited to 10 collaborators. This means a total of 10 Workspace members, Workspace guests and Pending Board and Workspace invites.

On 8th April, Free Workspace users won’t be able to add new collaborators but by 20th May 2024, things will get worse.

“From May 20, 2024, if your Workspace has more than 10 collaborators, the boards in this Workspace will become view-only. You’ll be able to see any of the boards in the Workspace you have access to but won’t be able to make changes,” Atlassian, which owns Trello, explained in a support doc.

Administrators can remove collaborators in order to edit their boards once 20th May arrives.

“To remove a collaborator from your boards you’ll need to make sure they’re removed as a member of the Workspace and they’re removed from any boards in the Workspace. We’ll be adding some additional features for Workspace Admins in Free Workspaces soon to make it easier to manage the collaborators in your Workspace,” Atlassian says.

Unfortunately, aside from removing collaborators the only other option for those who want to add more than 10 collaborators to Trello is to pay for the platform.

Aside from the free tier, the current Trello subscriptions are priced as follows:

• Standard – $5 per user per month (~R95)
• Premium – $10 per user per month (~R190)
• Enterprise – $17.50 per user per month (~R333)

We must point out that Enterprise pricing per user drops as you pay for more users.

Bad news for Trello’s free users then. If you happen to be one of them you may want to start budgeting for one of the paid tiers above or exploring other options.