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4 open source alternatives to Trello that you can self-host

Restyaboard project management software

Trello is a visual team collaboration platform that was recently acquired by Atlassian. And by that, I mean as recently as today Monday, January 9 2017.

I’ve been using Trello as a board member of DigitalOcean’s community authors and started using it to manage a small team project for a non-profit organization a couple of days ago. It’s a nice piece of software that any team, including those with non-geeky members, can use comfortable.

If you like Trello, but now want a similar software that you can self-host, or run on your own server, I’ve found four that you can choose from. Keep in mind that I’ve not installed any of these on my own server, but from the information I’ve gathered about them, the ones I’m most likely to use are Kanboard and Restyaboard.

And that’s because their installation requirements are familiar.. Their installation process are also relatively simpler. Restyaboard seems to have a more polished UI, so it will probably be my first option, though one of it’s requirements (Elasticsearch) makes me think that the server requirements will be more than for others. In any case, I’ll be posting my attempt to self-host both Kanboard and Restyaboard soon, so check back often.

Until then, the top four alternatives for Trello that I’ve found, are:

Kanboard

Aside form the fact that it is free and open source, Kanban features integrations with third party tools and services like Amazon S3 Storage, Hipchat, Jabber, RabbitMQ, Slack, and many more. Kanboard can be installed on a Microsoft operating system, but for installation on free and open source components, you’ll need the following:

  • PHP >= 5.3.9
  • MariaDB/MySQL, Postgres, or Sqlite
  • Apache or Nginx
  • CentOS 6/7, Debian 8, FreeBSD 10, or Ubuntu 14.04/16.04

From just a very cursory assessment of the project, the UI seems to be less polished than that of others mentioned in this article. And in the event that you change your mind about self-hosting, there’s a managed, or hosted Kanboard that you can register for. The project’s GitHub page is available at https://github.com/kanboard/kanboard
kanboard interface

Restyaboard

With a polished UI and ability to import data from Trello, Restyaboard is a very attractive Trello alternative. And the installation requirements seem modest; you’ll need the following to install Restyaboard on your server:

  • PHP-FPM
  • Postgres
  • Nginx
  • Elasticsearch

Even with those few requirements, installation is made even simpler with a script that will auto-install all you need on your server. Also there’s an AMI for installation on Amazon AWS. For Docker fans, there’s an unofficial Docker image you can use to run Restyaboard containers. I don’t encourage running Docker containers using unofficial Docker images, but it’s an option if you wish to go that route. Details at the project’s GitHub page.
Restyaboard project management software

Taiga

A Taiga deployment is made up of three components – taiga-back (backend/api), taiga-front-dist (frontend), taiga-events – each with its own requirements. In general, you need the following to install Taiga on your server:

  • Python >= 3.4
  • PostgreSQL >= 9.3
  • RabbitMQ (optional as long as you don’t want async notifications)
  • gcc and development headers
  • Ruby >= 2.1 (only for compiling sass)
  • NodeJS >= 5.0 (with npm, gulp and bower for downloading dependencies and compiling coffeescript)
    • The installation requirements seem to be a bit more involved than the others, so if that’s going to be an issue for you, there’s an hosted platform that’s free to use. Extra features on that hosted platform are fee-based. Visit the project’s GitHub page for details.
      Taiga project management software

      Wekan

      Wekan is built with Meteor, a JavaScript framework for building web applications, and is hosted at https://github.com/wekan/wekan. The project offers a 1-click installation on Heroku, Sandstorm, and verified Docker images for running it on Docker containers. It can also be installed on Scalingo, IndieHosters and Cloudron, but I couldn’t find installation instructions for deploying it on other Cloud hosting providers like Vultr and DigitalOcean.

      So it seems that your best bet, and the easiest route to installing Wekan, is to use one of the supported Cloud hosting platforms.
      Wekan project management software

      As promised, check back soon for the publication of my guide on how to install Kanboard and Restyaboard on your server.

      UPDATE

      Just after publishing this article, I came across Tuleap. It seems to be very polished, but a production installation is supported only on CentOS 6 and Red Hat 6. Containerized installation using Docker is supported, but not recommended for production.

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    pixeljobs
    pixeljobs
    3 years ago

    They are nice tools with open source, our team has tried another tool called zentao(www.zentao.pm), which is also open source, on-premise and free version available. It’s a scrum tool and very powerful of bug tracking.

    Rebecca Shalfield
    6 years ago

    After five years of near-continuous development, the source code to Kanbanara, a web-based project management system using the kanban methodology, has now been open-sourced under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. Kanbanara has been developed in Python 3.6 and utilises CherryPy as its web framework and MongoDB as its NoSQL database system.

    kritika pandey
    kritika pandey
    6 years ago

    Trello and all the other tools are good for organization looking for kanban model. But surely they lack in many other features required for sound project management like gantt, reports, templates etc. Well, we’re using ProofHub into our organization and it is my favorite tool. It is really helping in increasing productivity at work and also has proven to be the best collaboration tool for us.

    xet7
    xet7
    6 years ago

    Wefork has been merged back to Wekan. Wekan is under active development. https://wekan.github.io

    Olga
    Olga
    6 years ago

    Best free Trello alternative is Bitrix24 IMHO. It is the only free tool (not only the open source one) that gives you Gantt chart in addition to Kanban view.

    iitkbum
    iitkbum
    6 years ago

    Another one that we have been considering for a while is OrangeScrum. We are either looking at that or Tuleap as options for us.

    Tom
    Tom
    7 years ago

    Recently I’m using http://kanbantool.com/, it’s a really nice kanban board software and it offers a possibility to install on your server as well.

    Anastasios Selalmazidis
    7 years ago

    There is an autoinstallation script for wekan at my repo github.com/anselal/wekan. Also I plan to create one for https://github.com/wefork/wekan

    Tharbad
    Tharbad
    7 years ago

    Wekan is no longer developed. You should use wefork’s fork:
    https://github.com/wefork/wekan

    Depado
    7 years ago

    There is actually a full tutorial on Wekan’s Github on how to deploy it (using Docker or not).
    https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Install-and-Update

    Dave Lane (@lightweight)
    7 years ago

    I’ve written instructions for running your own Docker-based Wekan instance on any Ubuntu Linux server (VM or otherwise) here: https://tech.oeru.org

    tiagoprn
    tiagoprn
    7 years ago

    Kansas seems awesome: http://www.kansha.org/

    Manon
    7 years ago

    Thanks for mentioning Tuleap that provides Kanban boards integrated with other tools for agile development teams as well. I would love to know more what you think about Tuleap Kanban. All feedback is welcomed!

    Foxy
    7 years ago

    Thank you for the comparison! I’m still waiting for Restyaboard to support MariaDB.

    Nacho
    Nacho
    7 years ago

    I usually use kanbanflow, did you try it out? What is your opinion?

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