Trello vs TiddlyWiki
When comparing Trello vs TiddlyWiki, the Slant community recommends TiddlyWiki for most people. In the question“What are the best Evernote alternatives?” TiddlyWiki is ranked 14th while Trello is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose TiddlyWiki is:
No commercial interests, no ads, no registration, no nonsense. You own your notes 100%.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Simple and easy to use interface
There are two primary columns: the board is shown on the left and all the other controls on the right. The main means of interaction is dragging and dropping to-do cards into the various lists.
The board structure is very customizable, and includes a variety of features that help along the way: color-coding, due dates, card images, checklists with a graphics bar that allows following progress easily, and card aging for cards that haven’t been touched in a long time.

Pro Great real-time team collaboration features
Trello has permissions at the board level as well as the ability to assign multiple people to each card. There are a lot of sharing options available and boards can be made visible for the public. It's also possible to subscribe to a card to be notified of its progress. The simplicity of the UI makes collaboration easy because it’s very simple to see the progress of each card and who is responsible for it. It also updates constantly to reflect real-time changes in progress.
The simplicity of the UI makes collaboration easy as it’s very simple to see the progress of each card and who is responsible for it. It also reflect changes on boards in real-time.
Pro Highly flexible workflow
Trello calls items used in the workflow “cards.” Cards are double-sided and can contain subtasks as well as notes and other details.
Card columns can be used to simulate a workflow by moving cards from left to right as they are completed, or as a way of indicating task priority.
The workflow is highly flexible as the columns are completely customizable to suit the task flow. For example, tasks can be put through a workflow "idea > approved > in-progress > pending review > released" or simply "ideas > released" depending on the granularity level needed.
This makes Trello a great solution to feature management as it's possible to set up boards to handle everything from agile sprints to a more generic to-do list, all with status management.
Pro Free for unlimited users
Trello offers a very generous free version that has no ads, no restrictions on the number of users, and very little restriction on how the program can be used. The paid features are generally cosmetic, such as the ability to change the background, add stickers or integration with other tools.
Pro Works well for visual thinkers
The UI is based around Kanban, so you can see all your tasks and their status clearly.
Pro Functionality can be extended via plug-ins
Voting, view, and calendar plug-ins further increase the functionality.
Pro Markdown support with well-rendered images
Trello supports Markdown, meaning that HTML input is represented appropriately. Cards with attachments are also rendered well. For example, images are shown correctly on the card, bug links are detected etc.
Pro Sub-tasks
Each card can have one or even multiple task lists.
Pro Cross-platform and cross-sync
Trello works on all modern devices through the web application and has native apps for iOS, Android and Windows 8/10 devices.
Pro Attach files to cards
Keep all of your files (images, documents, etc.) organized on their relevant cards.
Pro Easy-to-use
Pro Best kanban for personal usage
Pro Excellent for groups using agile software development
The responsiveness and layers of customization make it easy for team members of various disciplines to collaborate on the same task board.
Pro Great prioritization, Due date and Story point features
Can set different priorities to various tasks, set appropriate due dates and Story points - timing allotted to each task.
Pro Good performance
Pro Features to add voting on cards
Trello offers support for features to add voting on cards, often referred to as 'power-ups'.
Pro Smooth media integration
Works like a charm.
Pro Great native app for Android and iOS
Pro Lots of API integrations
Pro Action history log allows you to rapidly follow changes
There is a global history system which allows to rapidly follow changes. There is also a notification system if another user updates the board while you're watching it.
Pro Free and Open Source
No commercial interests, no ads, no registration, no nonsense. You own your notes 100%.
Pro Extremely customizable
This is a major aim and point with TiddlyWiki; people can relatively easily modify it to fit their particular application needs.
Pro Single html file
It's a single file and all your notes will be "accessible even in 25 years" because they can be seen in plain html text.
Pro Self-hosted and indefinitely accessible
All content is stored within the same html file as the interface.
Pro 10+ years mature
Mature software, active community with members from all over the world.
Pro Relational links
Allows for relational links and lists between notes to keep things organized.
Pro Lots of plugins
Pro Progressive user level, from ease of use to programming your own plugins
Basic users can start with simple note-taking, progressively discover predefined features and existing plugins, then start using more fancy features (like filters, widgets, macros), in order to adapt their wiki to their needs.
Pro Multiple, user-defined usages
The list of possible usages is practically infinite in TW, and more importantly it lets the user define their own method of dealing with their content.
Pro Easy to use
Low barrier of entry for the non IT knowledgeable.
Pro Backlinking and backtagging and brain graph visualization
Follow the link back-and-forth.
Pro Lightweight and very customizable
Variety of settings, and community themes & plugins, available from built-in marketplace (CPL library). Every community plugin is open-source which means you can learn from it and develop your own. Some plugin don't require programming knowledge (written using WikiText), and is very easy to learn.
Pro Support many text format (Markdown, WikiText, HTML, WYSIWYG...)
Suit for programmer, writer, Notion style WYSIWYG editor lover, and HTML UI designer.
Pro Locally stored, not dependent on cloud
Everything is stored in your device. You can back them up, encrypt and process however you want to. Works completely offline. Read your notes anytime, anywhere, in any platform, and sync between without cost.
Pro Backlink and BackTagging, advanced linking and cross-references in various ways
Every card can link to other card, and other card will see the way it's linked to. Use Tag for nesting and build folder structure. Tags are tree shaped, and count of tag is limitless. Backlink can be automatically generated or selectively generated using advanced filter.
Pro Update all links when renaming notes (required the Relink plugin)
Renames titles in "Tags" and "List" fields by default. Relink plugin updates titles in all links automatically.
Pro Host your TiddlyWiki file on GitHub for free
You can use the TiddlyWiki saver to save your TiddlyWiki file directly to your github repository. If you also use GitHub pages, then you can load your file wherever you happen to be, make changes, and update.
Pro Active and helpful community typically answers questions within hours
The official support forum is at talk.tiddlywiki.org. It's frequented by a large number of knowledgeable TiddlyWiki enthusiasts. You rarely see a question go unanswered more than 2 or 3 days, and in most cases questions are answered within minutes. For harder questions, the developer himself frequently wades in to add information.
Pro The equivalent of DataView/SQL already baked into the product
You can create lists of anything inside TiddlyWiki like tags, title structure, date, custom fields and present it as links, checkboxes, tables or whatever structure you need using a few lines of wikitext (a markdown-like language with powerful widget ability built-in).
Pro Official CodeMirror Plugins for a complete editing experience
The official CodeMirror plugins allow you to close brackets, close tags, auto-complete, use VIM, Sublime or Emacs keybindings, and edit CSS, HTML, XML or Javascript text.
Pro Tags are first-class objects in TiddlyWiki
In TiddlyWiki tags aren't some kludgey text-based add-on -- they're built into the design from the first. Tags can contain spaces and non-Latin characters. Tags are available at the top of each note. Click on a tag and you instantly see all the other notes that share that tag. You can then change the order of that list simply by dragging and dropping from the tag-pill. Tags can tag other tags, allowing you to create multiple types of TOC's with the built-in tag macros. You can create new notes tagged with the current note with just one click.
Pro Encrypt your entire Wiki with SJCL without additional plugins
You don't have to worry about leaving your TW somewhere it might get exposed. You can activate the built-in encryption ability, using the Stanford Javascript Encryption Library to have your wiki encrypted with 256 bit security.
Pro Can embed images and documents for a portable, single-file solution.
TiddlyWiki gives you the choice of whether you access additional resources (images, docx, pdfs) externally from the operating system or internally as embedded objects.
Cons
Con Subtasks lack features
Every task can have a list of subtasks which more closely resembles a standard to-do list.
These lack the functions that cards offer you. You cannot comment on a sub-list, give the sub-tasks due dates, or provide additional information. You are limited to only checking them off once completed.
Con No multi-board aggregation
If you have multiple boards with tasks on them there is no way to get all the tasks on one board in a way that changes on one board will update the other.
Con Can't get one view of cards across all boards
However, you can view all cards assigned to you.
Con Not really a to do list
Trello is much more a workflow and project management program than a typical to-do app, which makes it overwhelmingly robust for those looking to jot down their shopping list.
Con You can't add more than 1 Power Up without paying for it
Con Can't create dependencies between cards
Con Project management system only
This is cumbersome to get started.
Con Managing large projects may be difficult
Trello works best with medium to small projects and with very high-level overviews. It is less effective for projects that require very granular management due to the fact that it becomes considerably more difficult to keep track of various cards and priorities as they are pushed off the screen.
Con Impossible to use Pomodoro timer connected to Trello on iOS
Con No quick deadline assignment
You have to open a Calendar every time to set a date without any quick options like today, tomorrow etc.
Con Slow and requires a lot of mouse work to navigate
Con Light on features
Trello is focused on simplicity and as such forgoes certain common features that may or may not be important to you.
Con Too many backlinks can cause performance issues
With 100k+ notes, backlink and brain graph visualization can slow down the wiki.
Con Relies on browser performance, online or offline
TiddlyWiki is a single HTML file. Thus, if you directly embed e. g large images or videos in it (instead of using the features to display externally stored images and videos) it would make the file big and performance slow.
Con Without JavaScript nothing is visible
You need a browser that is not outdated to open the wiki, if you want to edit the HTML wiki file inside browser. Or you will need to download app like TiddlywikiDesktop or TidGi App to edit the wiki.
Con Unintuitive, complex official user interface
Too powerful for some new users, requires stribg ability to learn many interactions and advanced features sets. But this can be change at anytime by install community theme and plugins. Or use edition like TidGi app to get Notion style experience.
