If the Trello cards keep going stale.
Trello is a lovely piece of software and its free plan is genuinely generous. The reason people go looking for an alternative is almost never Trello itself — it is that a board only works if everybody opens it, and on a shop floor or a service desk most people do not.
Pushed, not published.
A card sits on a board waiting to be looked at. WorkQueue puts the job on a strip docked at the top of that person's screen — thirty-four pixels tall, which Windows will not let a maximised window cover. There is nothing to open and no notification to swipe away.
And because the software knows the second the job landed there, it can time it. In Trello, timing is a Power-Up or a habit; here it is the pair of timestamps that every number on the reports is calculated from.
The cost of that is rigidity. Three columns, fixed, and a task is a title, a description, a priority and the comment thread about it. If your work needs more structure inside a single card than that, Trello is the better tool and this page is not going to argue.
Side by side.
| WorkQueue | Trello | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Handing jobs to people at PCs | Visual planning on shared boards |
| The employee has to open it | No — it is already on screen | Yes |
| Time tracking | Automatic | Manual, or a Power-Up |
| How you pay | ₹14,999 once, whole company | Free tier, then per user per month |
| Where the data lives | A PC in your office | Atlassian's cloud |
| With the internet down | Keeps working on the office network | Little or nothing |
| Columns you can design | Three, fixed | As many as you like |
| Checklists, labels, attachments | No | Yes |
| Phone app | Dashboard in a browser; no strip on a phone | Full app |
Trello's plans change; check the current ones yourself. The shape of the difference does not.
Which way you should go.
Stay on Trello if
- People do open the board. If the habit exists, it is a better board than this one and it costs you nothing.
- You plan visually. Columns you design, cards you drag, labels you invent — none of that exists here.
- Your team is on phones or spread across places, or on Macs. Trello is built for all three.
- A job needs sub-structure. Checklists and attachments inside a card have no equivalent in WorkQueue.
Move to WorkQueue if
- The cards go stale. The commonest reason people leave a board: it stops being looked at and stops being true.
- You want the timings. How long a job waited and how long it took, without asking anyone.
- Everybody is at a Windows PC in one building, on one network, all day.
- You would rather own it. One payment, and the record stays in your office.
The things people ask about this
Can I import my Trello boards?
Not automatically — there is no importer today. What most teams move is how tomorrow's jobs get handed out, not a history of finished cards.
Does a task have checklists or attachments?
No. A task is a title, a description, a priority and the comment thread between the manager and the person doing it. That is deliberate, and it is a genuine reason to stay on Trello if your jobs need more.
Can I have more than three columns?
No. Waiting, in progress, completed today. There is no setting for it.
Does it work on phones?
The dashboard does — it is an ordinary web page on your office network, so any phone on the same Wi-Fi opens it. The employee strip is a Windows program and has no phone version.
Try it on your own team for thirty days.
Every feature, unlimited PCs, no card and nothing to cancel. We will help you install it, and if it does not fit, nothing of yours has left the office.