Kantree – A better alternative to Trello | Hacker News Reader

Kantree – A better alternative to Trello

kantree.io

70 pointsatit54 comments

If you're going to claim "better" than Trello, you need to have a usable demo preferably only a click away, not a registration form away.

Hi, co-founder of Kantree here. We were not the one submitting and hadn't plan this for today but we're here to answer any questions you may have :)

I'd like to hear more about the self-hosted option: when that might become available, estimated pricing, directory service integration, etc.

We are starting beta testing the self-hosted version this month among a limited number of testers. We're integrating with LDAP at first. Pricing starts at 150$/user/year with discounts the more seats you get. We will adjust the pricing as customers enroll. If you're interested in joining the beta, contact us at contact@kantree.io

It looks cool. Can kantree import your Trello boards? I think if it can, then it could be a viable alternative. Otherwise, I think heavy Trello users might be too locked into trello to switch.

Yes, you can import boards from Trello and Asana. There's a link to https://kantree.io/import/ at the bottom of your dashboard.

Hi. Have you thought about adding WIP constraint warnings(flash red or something). It's fairly important in lean methodology.

It's in the pipeline.

Just the one I asked below on how long/much it took you to get this together and the stack and tools used?

Two developers have worked full-time on Kantree for 6 months. We're a four-people team with 3 devs and a business guy.

It's pretty classical stack with Python + Postgres + Redis on the backend and Angular.js for the frontend.

Thanks! How about deployment, monitoring etc? Any regrets on the stack you've chosen or changes you'd make?

If I may also ask, how did you fund it, and what's your revenue model? I'd like to make the leap one day to having some SaaS revenue, but all the apps I've seen seem (on the surface at least) like pretty hard markets to stand out in...

Here's a board [0] that lists the various tools and services we use: https://kantree.io/b/5575a09d63-kantree-stack

We're is a worker cooperative, 100% bootstrapped (http://digicoop.io). We expect most of our revenues to come from Kantree.

[1] http://digicoop.io

That's awesome! I've been thinking for a while that coops make a huge amount of sense for software development. Thanks for putting the lists together!

BTW have you read http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/? It's very pertinent to the kind of organisation you've built according to your team page. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts if you have.

Do you allow automated exports and/or some method to show change over time? It is very useful to show current vs. initial estimates, average effort overrun, average count of scope changes, etc.

This looks great! Do you have an ETA on 2 way synchronisation with Github?

Thanks! The Github integration is already available under your project's settings in the "Service Integrations" tab.

Struggling to get GitHub integration working with a private repository - I'll message you via the help form in the app.

Small nitpick - the pricing page should be $7, not 7$.

This is correct. However, it's funny because when I'm writing stream of consciousness (or chatting with someone) I often write 4$ instead of $4 because I'm typing as I'm thinking, and I don't think "dollars of which there are four" but "four dollars" as number then unit following.

It looks like it has more features than Trello but for that Trello is really easy and lightweight. So I don't like the headline saying it is a "better" alternative. Since right now I don't need all those features Trello is still the better thing for me. Why not "Kantree - A feature rich alternative to Trello."

We wouldn't have used such a headline but we were not the one submitting this. We contacted the admins to change it.

Even if it's better, the lack of private boards (for the free account) keeps me from even trying it out.

I keep a lot of personal to-do items in private Trello boards. The stuff in there isn't secret (per se), but I don't want it public either.

Agreed. It looks like a really cool project, and I wouldn't mind moving some open source stuff to it, but only being able to create public boards off the bat kind of scared me off. Would like to try it out as a personal TODO list and explore the features before converting a project over.

Organizations lets you create private boards. This way you can try Kantree for your personal projects without worrying about making anything public.

A big reason for public projects to be free on Kantree because we're big fan of open source software and want to help developers/communicate manage projects in the open.

Thanks for the response. I suggest you advertise this a bit more clearly on the pricing page. I went there to see if I could try it personally and ended up not singing up because it looked like you had to pay to try it privately. I'm sure more than a few people are in the same boat because, at least in this thread, it's being compared to Trello which does allow private boards/orgs.

Going to go give it a second look!

Thanks for the input. We'll change the /pricing page to better explain how you can try Kantree with private boards. We'll also rework the dashboard to show that you must create your own organization for private boards.

Private boards can be created inside organizations, so you can create an org with you as the sole member and manage your projects in private.

I'd be quite interested in the amount of time/money that's been spent developing this and the tool set. What would people estimate as a ballpark figure for resource required to put something like this together?

Shame there's not a demo board. Being able to go in and play around with some populated data without having to sign up would be a big plus.

And while this may be a better alternative to Trello, no where do I see why it's a better alternative. It would have be nice to have been sent to a click-through page that explains the reasons why, with maybe comparisons, to back up the title :)

Found a link[0] to their roadmap board. Seems to be read-only, but at least it gives you an idea what their UI looks like.

[0] http://dev.kantree.io/

Demo boards indeed would be great!

We haven't designed Kantree as a "better alternative to Trello" (this submission isn't ours!), we made Kantree to offer a fully-customizable kanban tool.

Trellos mobile apps are very strong. Any competitor would have to match those to get my vote.

Feels like "Show HN" implies that the submitter is one of the creators of Kantree, but it does not seem to be the case. Maybe a title change would fix that implication?

Slightly OT, but does anyone know of any good open source Trello clones? I want to use that kind of UI for an entirely different (non project management related) purpose and would love to have something I could base it off.

haven't used any of these myself, but

https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard, http://kanboard.net/, https://github.com/mezod/multikanban

via: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted

Its really nice - one of the better Trello clones. I just wish Trello development would restart - it seems to have got really slow in the last 6 months with no new major features etc.

The fact that it's relatively light on features is one of the things that makes Trello great.

They've been working on the Apple Watch app, other than that I think Trello is pretty feature complete. What other features do you think they need to add?

One deal-breaker for me at least is the lack of id numbers on the cards. It's much easier to tell someone, hey I completed card #8 than "Really long description of task". I know there is a bookmarklet out there that surfaces the hidden numbers, but getting an entire team of non-technical people to run it consistently is near impossible. It really should just be a configuration option.

Also I've been requesting a simple list item count for at least a year. As in, show me that a certain board has X number of cards in it. Pretty basic stuff that is still missing despite paying for the service and asking for it multiple times.

Being able to minimise the columns is GREAT, I've been looking forever for a kanban that does this. I don't understand why it is not a standard feature.

So far this is amazing. I might move my team to this, as we were already considering a trello subscription. Quite a surprise to see this.

One thing this seems to get right is pricing.

I get soooo much value out of Trello but have no reason to go onto the paying plans except charity.

And they still seem to be doing well for themselves, so what's the problem?

This is a Trello clone, I don't see any new features, but it is probably as good as Trello, except that it is limited to "funnel" processes, not any disordered lists you want, like Trello.

The "updating" bar at the top is annoying.

Is it really limited to processes? It seems to support unordered lists, like in this board: https://kantree.io/b/553f546c63-setup

Plans for an Android app? Trello's one is quite good on a 8" tablet. I can do meetings without a computer.

Indeed, their Android app is amazing and we hope to offer something of the same level in the future. Right now, Kantree is responsive and will adapt to smaller screens. The experience should be good on tablets. Unfortunately, we're still having a few touch and performance issues on larger projects which we are working on.

nice, although that green hurts my eyes...

A handful of people have said the same about my website which uses a darker shade of green. Perhaps with enough users someone will complain whatever the colour is but I'm wondering - is there something about green specifically that elicits this strong negative response in certain people?

Reminds me of Gak from Nickelodeon. The color doesn't really bother me, but my laptop has a shitty TN panel so I'm not the authority on color.

"hashing in geek terms using bcrypt"

<sarcasm> I believe you </sarcasm>

Yup, a paid Trello clone with marginal functional differences.

First of all, Trello also has paid plans.

Second, I've used the title to compare it to Trello as a click-bait, mostly because you've probably heard of Trello more than Kanban, which is what kantree is.

And Trello is Kanban too, but people would think that Trello actually invented something new, only it didn't... :)

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