How to Migrate from Trello to WeKan

Trello's free plan limits you to 10 boards, and paid plans start at $5/user/month. WeKan is the open source kanban board that replicates Trello's core experience — boards, lists, cards, labels, checklists — fully self-hosted with no limits.

What Transfers

Trello Feature	WeKan Status
✅ Boards	Direct import
✅ Lists	Direct import
✅ Cards	Direct import
✅ Card descriptions	Preserved
✅ Labels/colors	Mapped
✅ Checklists	Preserved
✅ Due dates	Preserved
✅ Members	Mapped to users
⚠️ Attachments	Links preserved, files may need re-upload
⚠️ Comments	Imported
❌ Power-Ups	Not supported
❌ Butler automations	Not supported
❌ Custom fields	Partial

Step 1: Export from Trello

Open your Trello board
Click Menu (⋯) → More → Print and Export
Select Export as JSON
Save the .json file
Repeat for each board

Bulk export (all boards):

Go to trello.com → Settings → Account → scroll to Personal Data Export
This exports all boards at once

Step 2: Deploy WeKan

# Docker — simplest deployment
docker run -d \
  --name wekan-db \
  -v /data/wekan-db:/data/db \
  mongo:6

docker run -d \
  --name wekan \
  --link wekan-db:db \
  -e MONGO_URL=mongodb://db/wekan \
  -e ROOT_URL=https://kanban.yourdomain.com \
  -p 80:8080 \
  quay.io/wekan/wekan

Or with Docker Compose for production setup.

Step 3: Import Boards

Log in to WeKan
Click Import Board (+ button on the home page)
Select Trello as the source
Upload your exported JSON file
Board imports with lists, cards, labels, and checklists

WeKan's Trello import is built-in and handles the mapping automatically.

Step 4: Set Up Users

Create user accounts for your team members
Add members to the imported boards
Set permissions (Admin, Normal, Comment-only)

Step 5: Adjust Workflow

Trello Feature	WeKan Equivalent
Board	Board
List	List (swimlane support too)
Card	Card
Labels	Labels
Checklists	Checklists
Due dates	Due dates
Card cover	Card color
Power-Ups	Custom fields, integrations
Butler	Webhooks (limited)
Calendar view	Calendar view ✅

WeKan extras not in Trello free:

Unlimited boards
Swimlanes (horizontal categorization)
Card subtasks
Time tracking
Customizable card fields
Board templates

Cost Savings

Team Size	Trello Standard	WeKan Self-Hosted	Savings
10 users	$50/month	$5/month (VPS)	$540/year
25 users	$125/month	$10/month	$1,380/year
50 users	$250/month	$20/month	$2,760/year

Full WeKan Deployment and Configuration

The Docker run commands above are sufficient for a quick test, but running WeKan reliably for a team requires a few additional configuration steps — particularly around MongoDB persistence, authentication, and reverse proxy setup.

Production Docker Compose

A production-grade WeKan setup uses Docker Compose to manage the MongoDB and WeKan containers together, with proper volume declarations and environment variable handling:

services:
  wekan-db:
    image: mongo:6
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - wekan_db:/data/db
    command: mongod --logpath /dev/null

  wekan:
    image: quay.io/wekan/wekan:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - wekan-db
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:8080:8080"
    environment:
      MONGO_URL: "mongodb://wekan-db/wekan"
      ROOT_URL: "https://kanban.yourdomain.com"
      MAIL_URL: "smtp://username:password@smtp.provider.com:587/"
      MAIL_FROM: "Kanban <kanban@yourdomain.com>"
      WITH_API: "true"
      RICHER_CARD_COMMENT_EDITOR: "true"
      CARD_OPENED_WEBHOOK_ENABLED: "true"
      # Registration settings:
      ACCOUNTS_LOCKOUT_KNOWN_USERS_FAILURES_BEFORE_LOCKOUT: "3"
      ACCOUNTS_LOCKOUT_KNOWN_USERS_PERIOD: "60"

volumes:
  wekan_db:

Put Caddy or Nginx in front on port 443. WeKan binds to 127.0.0.1:8080, so it's not directly accessible from the internet.

Authentication Options

WeKan supports several authentication methods beyond its built-in email/password system. For teams using an identity provider, LDAP and SAML configurations are available in WeKan's admin panel.

LDAP integration is useful for teams with an existing directory (Active Directory, OpenLDAP, or Authentik's LDAP provider). Configure LDAP in the WeKan admin panel under Settings → LDAP, providing the server URL, bind credentials, and user/group search filters. LDAP authentication lets users log in with the same credentials they use for other company systems, reducing password sprawl.

For OAuth2/OIDC, WeKan has built-in support for several providers. Configure these through environment variables or the admin panel. For self-hosted identity, Authentik and Keycloak both work as OIDC providers for WeKan — this gives you centralized session management, MFA enforcement, and audit logging through your identity provider rather than WeKan's built-in auth.

Email Notifications

WeKan sends email notifications for card assignments, due date reminders, and board activity. Configure the MAIL_URL environment variable with your SMTP provider's connection string. Without email notifications, team members must actively check the board rather than being alerted — for most teams, notifications are what makes a kanban tool actually useful.

Amazon SES is cost-effective for transactional email at this volume. At $0.10 per 1,000 emails, notification emails cost essentially nothing at any realistic kanban usage level. Configure SES with DKIM and SPF records for the sending domain to ensure notifications land in inboxes rather than spam folders.

For teams evaluating WeKan as part of a broader project management tool switch, the best open source project management tools guide covers how WeKan compares to Plane, Vikunja, and OpenProject — each of which offers different capabilities beyond kanban boards.

Security and Operational Considerations

WeKan stores your team's project data in MongoDB. The security posture of your WeKan deployment depends primarily on how well you restrict access to that database and the WeKan web interface.

MongoDB security: MongoDB's default configuration allows unauthenticated local connections. In the Docker Compose setup above, MongoDB is on an internal Docker network accessible only to the WeKan container — it's not exposed to the host or the internet. Verify this with docker compose ps and confirm that the MongoDB port (27017) does not appear in the published ports column. If you ever need to access MongoDB directly for maintenance, use docker compose exec wekan-db mongosh rather than exposing the port.

Network exposure: Only the WeKan web interface should be publicly accessible, and only through the reverse proxy on port 443. The internal Docker port (8080) is bound to 127.0.0.1 in the configuration above. Verify with ss -tlpn | grep 8080 that WeKan's port is not listening on the public interface.

Admin account security: The first user to register on a new WeKan instance becomes the admin. Set a strong admin password immediately after deployment and disable public registration (set ACCOUNTS_REGISTRATION_ENABLED to false in the admin panel or via environment variable). With public registration disabled, new accounts require admin creation or email invitation.

Backup strategy: WeKan's data lives entirely in MongoDB. Back up the MongoDB data directory or use mongodump to create consistent logical backups. A daily mongodump piped to gzip and uploaded to object storage is a practical baseline:

docker exec wekan-db-1 mongodump --db wekan --archive | \
  gzip > wekan-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).gz

Store at least 30 days of backups. Kanban boards accumulate project history over months — a 30-day retention window lets you recover from mistakes discovered late.

Monitoring: Set up uptime monitoring on the WeKan instance. An unavailable project management tool is a productivity blocker for the whole team. Monitor the / path — a successful response means WeKan is running. For more detailed monitoring, WeKan's API can be polled for board counts or active user sessions as health indicators.

Updates: WeKan releases updates frequently. Pin your Docker image to a specific version tag rather than using latest to keep updates deliberate. Review the changelog before each update — WeKan occasionally ships database migrations that run automatically on first startup with a new version, and understanding what's changing helps diagnose issues if they arise.

Migrating Automation and Power-Ups

Trello Power-Ups and Butler automations are the features that create the most migration friction. There's no automated way to bring them over — they need to be rebuilt using WeKan's available mechanisms.

Butler automations in WeKan: WeKan supports webhooks, which can trigger external automation tools when cards are moved, created, or updated. For simple Butler rules like "when a card is moved to Done, set the due date to today" or "when a card is added, assign to the current user," WeKan's built-in card rules handle some of these natively. For more complex multi-step automations, use WeKan's webhook output as a trigger in n8n or a similar automation platform.

Third-party Power-Up integrations: Trello Power-Ups that connect to external services (GitHub, Jira, Slack, Google Drive) need to be replaced with direct integrations or webhook-based connections. WeKan's REST API is documented and covers the full board/card data model, making it possible to build integrations that read and write WeKan data from external systems.

GitHub integration: One of the most common Trello Power-Ups is the GitHub integration for linking pull requests and commits to cards. WeKan doesn't have a native GitHub integration, but GitHub's repository webhooks can post to WeKan's API to create or update cards when PRs are opened or merged. This requires writing a small glue service or using a webhook relay, but it recreates the core functionality.

Time tracking: If you were using a Trello Power-Up for time tracking, WeKan has basic time tracking built in without any Power-Ups required. Cards have a "spent time" field and a "remaining time" field that team members can update manually. It's less sophisticated than dedicated time tracking Power-Ups, but it covers the basic "how long did this take" use case.

For teams that relied heavily on Trello Power-Ups for project management workflows, it's worth evaluating whether WeKan is the right destination or whether a more full-featured project management tool like Plane would better accommodate those workflows. The best open source alternatives to Asana guide covers tools that go beyond kanban boards to include timeline views, dependency tracking, and reporting — useful context if your Trello Power-Up usage suggests you've outgrown pure kanban.

Migration Timeline

Day	Task
Day 1	Deploy WeKan, import boards
Day 2	Set up users, adjust workflow
Day 3-7	Run both platforms
Week 2	Move primary work to WeKan
Week 3	Archive Trello, downgrade plan

WeKan vs Alternatives: Picking the Right Kanban Tool

WeKan is the most direct Trello replacement — it replicates Trello's board/list/card model with minimal friction during migration. But there are other open source kanban and project management tools worth knowing about before committing to WeKan.

Plane is the most feature-rich open source project management tool. It includes kanban views alongside sprint planning, issue tracking, roadmaps, and analytics. If your team outgrew Trello's simplicity and was using multiple Power-Ups to fill gaps, Plane might be a better migration destination than WeKan. The tradeoff is deployment complexity — Plane requires more infrastructure than WeKan's simple Mongo + Node stack. For teams that need the added power, it's worth the setup cost.

Vikunja is another lightweight kanban option with a Go backend and Vue frontend. It supports tasks, lists, and kanban views with a clean interface. Like WeKan, it runs efficiently on minimal hardware. Vikunja's design is more modern than WeKan's aging Meteor-based frontend, which some teams find important for daily-driver adoption.

For teams who need kanban boards as part of a broader open source project management and collaboration stack, the best open source project management tools guide covers the full spectrum from lightweight kanban to full project tracking suites, with resource requirements and migration notes for each option. Understanding the landscape before picking WeKan prevents a second migration if your team's needs grow beyond what kanban boards alone can handle. Teams comparing WeKan against more feature-complete project management tools like Plane and Huly should also review the Huly vs Plane vs Focalboard comparison for the full feature comparison including sprint tracking, roadmaps, and GitHub integration.

Compare kanban tools on OSSAlt — board features, self-hosting options, and community health side by side.

See open source alternatives to Trello on OSSAlt.

How to Migrate from Trello to WeKan 2026