Trello was the first tool a lot of agencies used, ours included. It's easy to see why. Drag a card from "Design" to "Client review" and everyone knows where the post is. Nobody needs training and the free plan costs nothing. Before Trello, we were tracking posts in WhatsApp threads and someone's memory, so it was a big step up.
The trouble is that Trello is a general-purpose kanban board, and social media agency work has some unusual demands. Your clients are outside the company. Your output has to be published at a set time on Instagram. And at the end of every month someone has to send a report and an invoice. This post covers what Trello handles well, what it costs an Indian team, and where agencies usually outgrow it.
How do social media agencies use Trello?
Almost every agency ends up with the same setup:
- One board per client. Put each client on a separate board. Anyone added to a board can see every card on it, so a shared board would show one client's posts to another.
- Lists for each stage: Ideas → Writing → Design / Edit → Internal review → Client review → Approved → Scheduled → Posted.
- One card per post. The caption goes in the description and the creative is an attachment. The card's due date is the posting date, labels mark the format (Reel, carousel, static), and the person working on it is the card member.
- Calendar view to see the month's posting dates, and checklists for things like hashtags, location tag and alt text.
For three or four clients and a team of two or three, this works well. If that's you, there's no need to switch yet.
What does Trello genuinely do well?
- Seeing what's in progress. A kanban board shows a bottleneck straight away. If eleven cards are sitting in "Client review", you know where the problem is.
- Almost no learning curve. A new designer understands it in five minutes, which matters when you hire freelancers for a busy month.
- Good mobile apps. You can move a card from a shoot location without opening a laptop.
- Simple automation. Trello's built-in automation (once called Butler) can move cards, assign people and set due dates. That's enough to stop a few things from being forgotten.
What does Trello cost an Indian agency?
Trello charges per user in US dollars. These are the figures from its pricing page, converted at ₹88 to the dollar, the rate we use across these comparisons:
| Plan | Price per user / month | What matters to an agency |
|---|---|---|
| Free | ₹0 | Up to 10 collaborators and 10 boards per workspace; 10 MB per file; 250 automation runs a month |
| Standard | $5 billed yearly (≈₹440) · $6 monthly (≈₹528) | Unlimited boards; single-board guests |
| Premium | $10 billed yearly (≈₹880) · $12.50 monthly (≈₹1,100) | Table, timeline and dashboard views; multi-board guests, billed at the same rate as members |
| Enterprise | $17.50 billed yearly (≈₹1,540) | SSO and organisation-wide admin controls |
The limit that matters most to agencies is on the free plan. Trello's help centre counts workspace members, board guests and pending invites towards the 10-collaborator limit. Once a free workspace goes over 10, every board in it becomes view-only, nobody new can be added and automations stop running until you remove people.
Here's how fast that happens. You have four people on the team and invite one contact from each of six clients. That's ten. When the seventh client signs and you invite them, the whole workspace becomes read-only, including the boards for clients who had nothing to do with it. You either upgrade to a paid plan that charges in dollars or stop inviting clients. Most agencies stop inviting clients, and approvals go back to WhatsApp.
Where does a kanban board stop being enough for client content?
None of these are bugs. Trello was built to track tasks, not to run a client content service. These are the gaps we kept running into:
- Client approval. To approve a post on Trello, a client needs a Trello account, has to find the right card, and needs to know what moving it means. Most business owners won't do that. They screenshot the creative and send feedback on WhatsApp, and the board stops matching what was actually agreed. We wrote up the process that does work in our content approval workflow template.
- Versions. Draft 1, draft 2 and the final export end up as three attachments on one card, with feedback spread across comments. Two weeks later nobody can say for certain which version the client approved. Our post on handling client revisions covers why that matters.
- Large files. The free plan caps attachments at 10 MB per file. Most finished Reels are bigger than that, so the video lives in Google Drive and the card holds a link.
- Publishing. Trello doesn't connect to Instagram or Facebook. Moving a card to "Scheduled" only means someone has to schedule the post in another tool. Integrations exist (some schedulers connect to Trello), but that's a second subscription and a second copy of every caption.
- Seeing all clients at once. With a board per client, there's no single place to see what's going live across all clients this week. Trello's table and dashboard views can show that, but they're on Premium, priced per user.
- Reports and invoices. At month end, the board can't produce a performance report for the client or a GST invoice. That's two more tools and an afternoon of copying and pasting.
Trello vs an agency-shaped tool, side by side
| Job | Trello | Agency management software |
|---|---|---|
| Track a post through stages | Yes, very well | Yes |
| Client approves on their phone | Needs a Trello account; counts towards your collaborator limit | Client portal or approval link, built for people outside your company |
| Version history of creatives | Attachments and comments on the card | Each version stored with the client's feedback |
| Publish to Instagram | Not built in; needs a separate scheduler | Built in |
| All clients in one calendar | Premium views, priced per user | Usually included |
| Monthly client report | No | Yes |
| GST invoice and UPI collection | No | Depends on the tool; check before you buy |
| Pricing | Per user, in dollars | Varies; Indian tools price in rupees |
We've compared other general-purpose tools in the same way: ClickUp for social media agencies and Google Sheets vs content calendar software. The pattern is the same each time. The general tool handles the agency's internal work well and struggles once the client is involved.
When should an agency stay on Trello?
There's no need to switch if most of these describe you:
- Five or fewer clients, and a team that fits inside the free plan's limit even after clients are counted.
- Clients who are happy to approve on a call or by email, and you're fine with that being the record.
- Someone on the team already schedules posts in Meta Business Suite and doesn't mind doing it.
- Reporting and invoicing are already handled somewhere else and aren't causing problems.
Signs you've outgrown it: approvals have quietly moved back to WhatsApp, you've posted the wrong version of a creative at least once, or Sunday evening goes on copying captions into a scheduler.
How do you move off Trello without losing a month?
- Don't migrate history. Archive the old boards as they are and start each client fresh from the next month's calendar.
- Switch one client first. Pick the one with the most approval back-and-forth, since that's where the new tool will make the most difference.
- Keep the same stages. Your team already knows Ideas → Design → Review → Approved. Use the same names in the new tool.
- Tell the client what changes for them. One WhatsApp message: "From next month you'll get one link to approve posts." Keep it simple.
- Move the rest at the start of a month. Avoid switching in the middle of a month, and avoid festive season.
Frequently asked questions
Is Trello good for a social media agency?
Yes, for a small team that needs to see what stage each post is at. A board per client with one card per post is quick to set up and easy to learn. It gets harder once you have many clients, need clients to approve posts, want to publish automatically or have to send reports and GST invoices.
Do client guests count towards Trello's free plan limit?
Yes. Trello's help centre counts workspace members, guests on individual boards and pending invites towards the 10-collaborator limit on free workspaces. If you go over, every board in the workspace becomes view-only and automations stop until you remove people. Agencies that invite clients reach the limit quickly.
Can Trello post to Instagram for a client?
Not by itself. Trello tracks the work, but it does not connect to Instagram or Facebook and cannot publish at a set time. Some scheduling tools connect to Trello so a card can trigger a post. That means paying for and maintaining a second tool, and keeping the caption and creative the same in both.
Should an agency use one Trello board for all clients or one per client?
One board per client, because guests on a board can see every card on it, and a shared board would show one client's work to another. The cost is that you lose a single view of the week across clients. On Trello, that combined view needs the Premium plan's table and dashboard views.
Sources
- Trello — Pricing: plan prices; free-plan limits of 10 collaborators and 10 boards per workspace, 10 MB per file and 250 automation runs a month; table, timeline and dashboard views on Premium; multi-board guests billed as members.
- Atlassian Support — Collaborator limit for free Workspaces: members, guests and pending invites all count, and boards become view-only above the limit.
- Rupee figures converted at ₹88 to the US dollar and rounded. Trello bills in dollars, so the rupee amount you pay depends on the exchange rate and your card's foreign-currency charges.
Keep the board for to-dos. Run client content here.
Calendars for every client, one-tap approval on the client's phone, auto-publishing to Instagram, monthly reports and GST invoices in one login. Priced in rupees, from ₹999/month, with a 7-day money-back guarantee. See the agency management software and the Instagram scheduler.